The Equal Protection Clause: Fourteenth Amendment Of The United States Constitution

The Equal Protection Clause is the main focus of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This amendment took effect in 1868. It states that no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction (the equal protection of the laws). A main motivation of this clause was to verify the equality provisions contained in the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Which guaranteed that all people would have rights equal to those of all citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment put a large shift in American constitutionalism, by applying substantially more constitutional restrictions against the states than had applied before the Civil War. The meaning of the Equal Protection Clause has been the subject of much argue and inspired the well-known phrase