Simple English definitions for legal terms
Read a random definition: proprio vigore
The Fourteenth Amendment is a constitutional amendment that was ratified in 1868. Its primary provisions apply the Bill of Rights to the states by prohibiting states from denying due process and equal protection and from abridging the privileges and immunities of U.S. citizenship.
One of the most important concepts in the Fourteenth Amendment is citizenship. The Citizenship Clause confers U.S. and state citizenship at birth to all individuals born in the United States. This overturned the Supreme Court's decision in Scott v. Sanford, which held that African Americans were not U.S. citizens, even if they were free.
The Fourteenth Amendment also contains the State Action Clause, which declares that a state cannot make or enforce any law that abridges the privileges or immunities of any citizen. This clause has been used to address racial discrimination by private actors, such as in Shelley v. Kraemer, where the Supreme Court decided that the judicial enforcement of a private restrictive covenant that prohibited non-Caucasian occupants violated equal protection to a black buyer.
The Due Process Clause is another important provision of the Fourteenth Amendment. It contains two concepts: procedural due process and substantive due process. Procedural due process guarantees fairness to all individuals, while substantive due process endorses other rights, such as privacy rights.
The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees that all citizens of the United States are guaranteed equal protection under the laws of the United States. When a statute or ordinance discriminates against an individual or a class of individuals, and those individuals sue, the court will apply one of three levels of scrutiny to the law in question: rational basis, intermediate scrutiny, or strict scrutiny.
Overall, the Fourteenth Amendment is a crucial part of the U.S. Constitution that protects the rights of citizens and ensures equal treatment under the law.