“That all citizens shall be forever equal, subject to like penalties for like crimes and no other.”
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 […]
James Ho in a Wall Street Journal op-ed repeats common misunderstandings over what “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” under the Fourteenth Amendment was declared to mean by its primary framers, the United States Attorney General and the Supreme Court and concludes any effort by States to refuse citizenship to children born to undocumented aliens to […]
Yesterday in the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker enjoined California’s Proposition 8 from being enforced on the grounds California has a “constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis.” Judge Walker finds California’s anti-SSM law violates both the Due Process and the Equal Protection clauses under the Fourteenth Amendment. […]
This may be old news by now, but I wanted to add a few remarks regarding the Association of Community Organizations (ACORN) argument that a House resolution amounted to a “bill of attainder” that resulted in a cut off federal grant money to the group. Judge Nina Gershon agreed, writing, “They [ACORN] have been singled […]
The Supreme Court recently held in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission that corporations had a First Amendment right to spend money to support or oppose political candidates. The Court struck down federal laws regulating independent political advertising by for-profit and non-profit corporations before an election even as they reaffirmed rules about disclosure and disclosures […]
Like many pro constitutional gun ownership activists, Alan Gura’s brief for the petitioners in McDonald v. City of Chicago attempts to cast doubt on Slaughterhouse precedent that says the Fourteenth Amendment was not intended “as a protection to the citizen of a State against the legislative power of his own State.” He wants to convince […]
Equal Protection of the Laws simply means all persons shall be tried and punished equally before courts of law as it did under Common Law. The clause has no application outside of criminal law which explains why the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments were needed. Justice Scalia speaking of the Fourteenth Amendments Equal Protection Clause (EPC) […]
Updated 3/1/07 Just when I thought I had seen and heard it all, comes the case Scott v. Harris. The case involves Coweta County Deputy Sheriff Timothy Scott’s decision in 2001 to end a wild, high-speed chase over dark and wet Georgia highways by finally ramming the back of Victor Harris’ Cadillac, sending him down […]
The American Civil Liberties Union again is suing under the twisted rational the Fourteenth Amendment somehow disables local government from displaying anything remotely religious in nature. The latest victim targeted by the ACLU is the rural Florida county of Dixie, which has a Ten Commandments monument at the steps of its courthouse. The lawsuit says […]