IIIIiinnnteressstinnnnnggg... ; ^ )
from a post by sylphslider seen via snobahr -
" I'm reading a series of law papers given at the centennial of the 14th amendment. For those who don't know, that's the amendment that made citizens out of all people born or naturalized in the US.
It's my contention, and I think the legal community supports me on this, that the 14th amendment is the most important amendment in the bill of rights. It even bypasses the first amendment.
There are two truly important clauses in the 14th amendment - they're called the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause. These make it illegal for any state to deny equal civil rights to US citizens by providing that no state would "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law" or would "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
The 14th amendment applied the Bill of Rights to the states. Before the amendment passed, the BoR was only federal and the states didn't have to abide by it. So the feds could not, say, abridge freedom of speech but the states could. At that time each state was (theoretically) equal in power and authority to the nation, so the nation had difficulties make it illegal for state law to violate federal law. When the 14th amendment passed every state BoR was invalidated. The federal government became the protector of an individual's rights even if a state wanted to take those rights away - which many Southern states wanted to do during and after Reconstruction. Civil rights is a federal issue now, not a state issue, which is one reason I'll be somewhat ok if the state Supreme Court upholds Prop. 8. If they do, the ACLU will take it to the Supreme Court, which should overturn it given the massive amount of both common law and SC decision precedence. And if the SC overturns Prop. 8, gay marriage will be automatically legal everywhere, not just in a handful of states. "
" I'm reading a series of law papers given at the centennial of the 14th amendment. For those who don't know, that's the amendment that made citizens out of all people born or naturalized in the US.
It's my contention, and I think the legal community supports me on this, that the 14th amendment is the most important amendment in the bill of rights. It even bypasses the first amendment.
There are two truly important clauses in the 14th amendment - they're called the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause. These make it illegal for any state to deny equal civil rights to US citizens by providing that no state would "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law" or would "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
The 14th amendment applied the Bill of Rights to the states. Before the amendment passed, the BoR was only federal and the states didn't have to abide by it. So the feds could not, say, abridge freedom of speech but the states could. At that time each state was (theoretically) equal in power and authority to the nation, so the nation had difficulties make it illegal for state law to violate federal law. When the 14th amendment passed every state BoR was invalidated. The federal government became the protector of an individual's rights even if a state wanted to take those rights away - which many Southern states wanted to do during and after Reconstruction. Civil rights is a federal issue now, not a state issue, which is one reason I'll be somewhat ok if the state Supreme Court upholds Prop. 8. If they do, the ACLU will take it to the Supreme Court, which should overturn it given the massive amount of both common law and SC decision precedence. And if the SC overturns Prop. 8, gay marriage will be automatically legal everywhere, not just in a handful of states. "