![]() Very much about applying the Constitution to state and local governments. The 14th Amendment was all about regulating state and local governments. ![]() The 14th Amendment says, no state shall deny any person of equal protection laws. It wasn't until the 14th amendment was added to the constitution in 1868, that we come to the mention of equal protection laws. So for all of these reasons, it's not surprising that equality is nowhere mentioned in the text of the constitution itself. Women did not get the right to vote until 1920, when the 19th amendment was adopted. From being able to engage in their own business transactions. In fact, married women were prohibited by law from entering into contracts. Now it wasn't only with regard to slavery and race, that the constitution was unequal. The Supreme Court in Prigg versus Pennsylvania said, the Constitution never would have been ratified without the fugitive slave clause. It says that if a slave escapes from a slave state to a free state, the slave must be returned to his or her owner. Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution contains what is known as the fugitive slave clause. They protected the ability to bring in additional slaves for 20 years, but then left it up to congress to regulate the slave trade. So no issue was more divisive at the Constitutional Convention or the United States before the Civil War than that of slavery and the framers compromised. One of the few provisions in the entire document that cannot be amended by Congress is Article I, Section 9, limiting the ability to ban importation of slaves for 20 years. In fact, if you look at Article V of the Constitution about the amendment process. Now though it doesn't mention slavery, what this specifically was about was that Congress cannot ban importation of additional slaves for 20 years. The Constitution in Article I, Section 9 prohibits Congress from banning importation of individuals until 1808. Who are the others, who counted only as three-fifths of a person? Slaves. And it's based on counting each free person and three-fifths of all others. Article I, for example, talks about how representation in the House of Representatives would be allocated. But there's no doubt that the Constitution protected that institution. The word slavery itself doesn't appear in the Constitution. As Thurgood Marshall said, institutionalized by the Constitution. Most obviously of course, the institution of slavery was very much protected by the Constitution. This should not be surprising, the Constitution was hardly a document about equality. Even if you continue your examination and look at the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments of the Constitution. If you look at the first 7 articles of the constitution, there's no mention of equality. The eight major part in my lecture focus on equal protection. ![]() Assess the relative suitability of various approaches to constitutional interpretation and analysis View Syllabus Explain how the outcome of cases is often dependent upon the current cultural and political climate as well as the composition of the court by citing particular cases and important shifts in the court's jurisprudence Articulate the importance of key cases such as Brown v. Illustrate compromises found in the Constitution by citing examples and historic background Describe the individual liberties protected by the Constitution and account for the history and structure of their protection Join me as we look at the questions both raised and answered by the Constitution and those that interpret it!īy the end of this course, you should be able to: In our final two lectures, we'll take a close look at what is probably the most famous amendment to the Constitution, the First Amendment. We'll examine when the government can permissibly treat people unequally and when it can't. We'll then examine the circumstances under which, various rights and liberties can be regulated by the federal, state, and local government. We'll begin by examining the structure of the Constitution's protection of individual rights. In this course we will investigate the protection of individual rights and liberties and take a look at what rights are and are not protected and investigate several important shifts in jurisprudence. You'll learn the history behind the Constitution, cases that formed important precedent, and how changes in interpretation have been dependent on shifts in cultural and political climate as well as the composition of the Supreme Court. Constitution through the centuries with an emphasis on protections of individual liberties and the evolution of equal protection. Chemerinsky on Constitutional Law: Individual Rights and Liberties will highlight the construction and interpretation of the U.S.
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