Constitutional Law

The 13th Amendment

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. U.S. Const. amend. XIII 

Case Law

Bailey v. Alabama (1911)

• Alabama law criminalizing the taking of money for work not performed was unconstitutional, as it was essentially involuntary servitude outlawed by the 13th Amendment.

The 14th Amendment

1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.

3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. U.S. Const. amend. XIV 

Case Law

Citizenship Clause

United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) 

• A child born in the United States in a situation where their parents were not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under a foreign government, they automatically become a United States citizen under the 14th Amendment.
• In this case, the Supreme Court established the parameters of the concept known as jus soli.

Equal Protection Clause

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)

• The Equal Protection Clause prohibits states from segregating public schools based on race. Determined that the separate of educational facilities is inherently unequal and therefore unconstitutional.
• This case reversed the prior "separate but equal" doctrine created in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

"Selective Incorporation" of the Bill of Rights

Following the passage of the 14th Amendment, there were many questions about how the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution would apply to the States under the Due Process Clause. Many argued that the Bill of Rights should be incorporated in their entirety, while others felt that it should only be selectively incorporated on a case by case basis. Ultimately, the concept of "Selective Incorporation" began to unfold, whereby the Supreme Court began to go piece by piece to determine what aspects of the Bill of Rights were applicable to the States and which were not. The following table shows the current outline of incorporated rights through the 14th Amendment:

The Right to Due Process of Law

One significant area of law under the 14th Amendment is the Due Process Clause. This specific area of the 14th Amendment has led to a lot of argument, confusion and growth in the law since its addition to the Bill of Rights. As an example, the Due Process Clause has two separate and distinct doctrines of law, "Procedural" Due Process and "Substantive" Due Process.

Procedural Due Process

"Procedural" due process includes the rights and protections that one would typically expect to possess within the context of criminal procedure. These rights ensure that an individual is not unfairly deprived of life, liberty or property. These rights typically include the right to having notice of the crime you are being accused of, the right to be heard, the right to an unbiased fact-finder (i.e. jury), the right to present evidence, the right to cross examine a witness, the right to an attorney, etc. 

Case Law

Meyer v. Nebraska (1923)

• "[Liberty] denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint, but also [1] the right of the individual to contract, [2] to engage in any of the common occupations of life, [3] to acquire useful knowledge, [4] to marry, [5] establish a home and bring up children, [6] to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally [7] to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men."

Goldberg v. Kelly (1970)

• An individual is entitled to procedural due process not only for personal rights, bit for privileges as well. Here, it was extended to government entitlements that included welfare benefits.

Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth (1972)

• Due process only applies to "presently enjoyed" rights or interests, but does not extend to potential future rights or interests that one might possess in the future.

Mathews v. Eldridge (1976)

• A procedural due process analysis must use a balancing test that takes into consideration (1) the interests of the individual, (2) the interests of the government in limiting the procedural burdens, (3) the risk of curtailing individual interests under the existing procedures, and (4) how much additional procedures would help reduce the risk of error.

Substantive Due Process

Many argue that the concept of Substantive Due Process really owes its creation to the decision made in the Slaughterhouse Cases (1872), wherein the Court determined that the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the 14th Amendment only applied to aspects of federal citizenship, not state citizenship. Although many at the time felt as though the Privileges and Immunities Clause extended federal constitutional rights to the States, including a dissenting opinion written by Justice Field, the Supreme Court ultimately did not agree. Instead, the majority opinion determined that there was a very strict and narrow interpretation for the Privileges and Immunities Clause under the 14th Amendment. As a result, the Privileges and Immunities Clause essentially became powerless. However, this development would later result in the creation of the Substantive Due Process doctrine, which essentially became what many had originally believed the Privileges and Immunities Clause was intended to represent.

United States v. Carolene Products Co. (1938) and Footnote 4

Although the Court in United States v. Carolene Products Co. ultimately determined that the use of the "Rational Basis" test was most appropriate for economic regulations like those addressed in the case, the most significant development, historically, came out of Footnote 4 in the case United States v. Carolene Products Co. (1938). Within footnote 4, the Court had reserved the potential for more heightened forms of scrutiny. Specifically, footnote 4 listed these three separate possibilities:

• "There may be narrower scope for operation of the presumption of constitutionality when legislation appears on its face to be within a specific prohibition of the Constitution, such as those of the first ten amendments, which are deemed equally specific when held to be embraced within the Fourteenth.
• It is unnecessary to consider now whether legislation which restricts those political processes which can ordinarily be expected to bring about repeal of undesirable legislation is to be subjected to more exacting judicial scrutiny under the general prohibitions of the Fourteenth Amendment than are most other types of legislation. On restrictions upon the right to vote, see Nixon v. Herndon; Nixon v. Condon; on restraints upon the dissemination of information, see Near v. Minnesota ex rel. Olson; Grosjean v. American Press Co.; Lovell v. Griffin; on interferences with political organizations, see Stromberg v. California; Fiske v. Kansas; Whitney v. California; Herndon v. Lowry and see Holmes, J., in Gitlow v. New York; as to prohibition of peaceable assembly, see De Jonge v. Oregon.
• Nor need we enquire whether similar considerations enter into the review of statutes directed at particular religious, or national, or racial minorities: whether prejudice against discrete and insular minorities may be a special condition, which tends seriously to curtail the operation of those political processes ordinarily to be relied upon to protect minorities, and which may call for a correspondingly more searching judicial inquiry."

Many credit this part of the case with leading to the creation of the current multi-tiered standard of review analysis seen today, i.e. "Rational Basis" "Intermediate Scrutiny" and "Strict Scrutiny."

A Penumbra of Rights and the Discovery of the Right to Privacy

Based on United States v. Carolene Products Co. (1938) and subsequent cases afterwards, it became clear that there were explicit rights guaranteed by the Constitution that, when interfered with by government laws, would require a more "strict" standard of review. However, this gave rise to the question of whether any implicit rights exist within the Constitution as well. As it turns out, they do, and the Supreme Court would go on to detail these implicit rights across several cases, many of which fall under the umbrella of one's right to privacy.

Griswold v. Connecticut (1965)

• One's right to privacy can be inferred based on language contained within the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The right to privacy the use of contraception by married couples without government intervention.

Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972)

• Right to privacy extends to use of birth control by unmarried couples as well.

Roe v. Wade (1973)

• Right to privacy extends to woman's choice to have an abortion up until the point of viability for the fetus.
• This privacy right was later reversed and struck down in the subsequent case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022).

Lawrence v. Texas (2003)

• Right to privacy extends to the performance of consensual sexual conduct between individuals of the same sex.

Obergefell v. Hodges (2015)

• Right to privacy extends to act of marriage between individuals of the same sex.

The 15th Amendment

1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. U.S. Const. amend. XV

Case Law

United States v. Reese (1875)

• The 15th Amendment does not outright guarantee suffrage, but rather prohibits the government from giving preferential treatment to one group over another based on race, color or previous condition of servitude.