14th Amendment Strengths And Weaknesses

Superior Essays
The Bill of Rights to every American is the crown jewel center piece of our constitution and from which just about all legal proceedings are based from. Akhil Reed Amar's "The Bill of Rights as a constitution" pages 1131-1210 and 1193-1284, details and analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the Bill of Rights. Amendments such as the fifth, ninth, and tenth are currently the sole topic of college courses such as Constitutional Law, the sixth, eighth, and a majority of the fifth are taught in Criminal Procedure and the seventh is taught in Criminal Procedure. Teaching these amendments to Americans is essential so that when issues arise we can have the knowledge we've learned right on hand. In the current day and age interpretations of the …show more content…
Justice Frankfuter has said that the fourteenth amendment does not incorporate none of the provisions included in the Bill of Rights. This amendment only requires that states abide by simple regulations of fairness for citizens and it can be said that these ideals can also be found in the bill of rights, but does not really relate to the rules in the amendment. It was a hot debate between Brennan, Black, and Frankfuter as far as their own personal opinions were concerned. Focusing on Justice Black in particular, he was a man who believed immunities and priviliges of citizens first was used against the States when the fourteenth amendment was born. Contrary to the idea, The Bill of Rights wasn’t entirely for the citizens when focusing on the provisions it included. Some included partial rights of a state and hardly were fully against …show more content…
Having slaves was economical to most because it was free labor from people White's didn’t even consider to be humans with rights. It is said that the invintion of the Cotton Gin in particular killed any chance that slavery could be completely abolished without economic repercussions. Slavery was a child of state laws and for a very long time the federal government didn’t get involved to prevent back lash and because slavery made money. In 1850 the constitution completely blocked any federal involvement in the slave business. Slave states violated every freedom law put into place by the Bill of Rights and this wasn’t right at all, but no one was going to stop them. A step in the right direction concerning slave rights was the creation of the 13th Amendment which granted the abolishment of slavery sent Americans scrambling. With slavery gone people had to find new means of making up for the missed labor for those who lost their

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    The Bill of rights was added to the constitution in 1791 to ensure limited government and protect the right of the American people from the national government. The addition of the 14th amendment in 1868 required the states to also guarantee citizens their due process rights and equal protection of the law. The bill of rights has protected and expanded the rights of the citizens of the united states. In the picture with the man burning the flag is supposed to resemble the Texas v Johnson case of 1989 the court ruled in favor of Johnson because they believed that the bill of rights protects a person’s right of expression as long as it does not harm anyone else.…

    • 220 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    For much of the 21st century it was believed that slavery caused the economy of the Antebellum South to stagnate. Many historians took issue with the profitability of slavery and thought that its demise was inevitable, regardless of the Civil War. Some even consider the Antebellum South’s economy to be backwards in the sense that slave labour rates were so competitive that it resulted in the wages of other free workers to drop below the subsistence level (Conrad & Meyer 1971, 341). This created a deficit of skilled white labourers in the market and prevented a sustainable perfectly competitive labour market. In addition to this, slavery was criticized as being preventative to long-term economic growth.…

    • 1039 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    14th Amendment Dbq

    • 972 Words
    • 4 Pages

    America’s early system of government, based on the Articles of Confederation, consisted of many flaws including the inability to attend to foreign affairs. Delegates from the colonies attended the Continental Congress to address these issues with the intention to alter the articles. However, the articles were entirely discarded and the Constitution was conceived as a result. During the ratification process, the absence of explicitly stated protections of citizens’ rights was a concern. Thus, James Madison, the primary author of the Constitution, drafted the Bill of Rights and it became the first ten amendments.…

    • 972 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Throughout all of American history, no other document has maintained an equally important and ever changing role in our government than the United States Constitution. The Constitution drew the plans for the creation the three branches of government and provided the structure on which the national government would grow. The most famous aspect of the Constitution is the Bill of Rights. Written by James Madison as a response to the States’ demands that individual liberties be provided and protected, the Bill of Rights serves to establish the personal rights of every man in America. Among these rights are the right to counsel, which is preserved in the Sixth Amendment, and the right to not withstand or be subjected to cruel or unusual punishment,…

    • 1252 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    14th Amendment Dbq

    • 868 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The fourteenth amendment was one of great change and controversy. The amendment addressed equal protection of the laws, due-process of law, and citizenship . In section one of the 14th amendment it states “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States…

    • 868 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As a United States citizen, the Constitution affords the citizens certain absolute liberties. One of those liberties is housed within the most referenced amendment; the 14th amendment. The 14th amendment; ratified in 1868, Section 1 states in part: …nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Within this amendment lays the foundation for the citizens of the United States to be able to sell their own human organs for profit.…

    • 652 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Vermont, Maine, and Mississippi (depending on the crime) are the only three states out of fifty that allow voting while in jail, for all other states the voting right is removed while serving time in jail, prison, on parole or probation. For all 50 states, the right to vote is restored after serving the correct time or term. Some conditions apply for certain states, but it is still possible to retain the right to vote. The major of the states have the law, which is you lose the right to vote while serving your term and retain it afterwards, but other states have different laws. I believe that the right to vote should be revoked while serving your time, but retained after you’ve served your term.…

    • 1246 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Constitution is an extremely important document to our country. As such, over the years we have made changes (amendments) to it in order to keep up with society’s changes. At the time when the Constitution was signed and enacted, many people were not included in the statements of this agreement. The 14th Amendment ratified it so citizens were considered as “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” which includes formed slaves (“14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution”, 2015). It also forbids states from denying anyone “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”.…

    • 727 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The first subject I will be talking about is when the 14th amendment was ratified on July 28, 1868. This amendment grants citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” which included former slaves who had been freed after the Civil War. The amendment was denied by most of the confederate states because they didn’t want the former slaves to have the right to become a citizen. In their minds the former slaves were not legal citizens because they were brought here to be one thing and one thing only which was slaves. I personally like this amendment because if you were born or admitted into this country I think you should have the right to be a U.S. citizen.…

    • 1270 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Bill of Rights is the first 10 Amendments of the Constitution. It was created to exclude governmental power to citizen rights. The Bill of Rights, is a protection for an individual’s liberty. Built for a person’s freedom of speech, religion, and press. It arranges rules for due process of law and reserves all power not substituted to the Federal Government, to the people or the states, but imagine if the government stops granting you those rights, striping them away from you.…

    • 1500 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments gave slaves hope for the right of freedom, citizenship and the right to vote but Jim Crow Laws in the south soon prevented these rights. Southern stakeholders were initially threatened by the emancipation of the slaves as they were a major asset that if taken would destroy their way of life. However; once Johnson was elected President over time he became lenient toward the south allowing them back in to parliament and their hopes soon grew. As the hopes of the ex-slaves for equality faded, the southern stakeholders’ dissatisfaction with emancipation diminished as the new position of ex-slaves developed into a system much like slavery. Emancipation raised the hope of slaves, Radical Republicans and Northerners in the beginning and while limited freedom and education was delivered and some were reunited with family members, their hopes for justice and equality were generally short lived and not satisfied.…

    • 1180 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    Essay On 14th Amendment

    • 1267 Words
    • 6 Pages

    If you were going to become president of the United States would you keep the 14th Amendment like it is or would you alter it slightly? In the race for president between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump is proposing to modify the 14th Amendment to end its guarantee of “birthright citizenship.” This means that someone born on American soil to parents who are not citizens would no longer automatically be a citizen. The issue of birthright citizenship is debatable and it is a topic of importance in this year's election. It makes sense that if a person’s parents were not born in the United States that their kid would be an American citizen if they were born here.…

    • 1267 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    14th Amendment Essay

    • 1185 Words
    • 5 Pages

    While each section is meant to rectify and address a certain issue, they all work together to achieve one goal which is referred to in the first section, “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.” This section makes sure to give citizenship to all people in every state, not just certain states that say so in their state constitution. This was a big deal because it becomes a federal law that states cannot override. Moreover, this made sure the South, specifically, followed this because they were not able to rejoin the union unless they ratified the 14th amendment. This meant that discrimination and guaranteed equal protection…

    • 1185 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    By reducing the rights of slaves and giving an overwhelming majority of power to the southern states in the House of Representatives through the three-fifths clause, it has become clear that the early American viewpoint was that we needed to keep slavery for as long as we can. As slave labor being the number one source of plantation workers in the south, by removing them entirely, the income once obtained by these landowners would be decreased siverly, and the north knew it. By removing slavery from the early American lifestyle, the economic boost we were going through would drastically decrease from where they…

    • 1585 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Congress needed a solution to the issue of black inequality, so they came up with some new amendments. These new amendments were the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. The Thirteenth Amendment was perhaps the starting point that got the ball rolling for equality. In Give Me Liberty, Eric Foner went into detail about each of the amendments, and stated, “On January 31st, 1865, Congress approved the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery throughout the entire Union-and in doing so, introduced the word ‘slavery’ to the Constitution for the first time” (541). Abolishing slavery was the first step for gaining equal rights for blacks because it gave them the ability to be their own person, and to fight for even more equal rights.…

    • 1402 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays