What is the relationship between the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment?

Passed by the Senate on June 8, 1866, and ratified two years later, on July 9, 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment granted citizenship to all persons "born or naturalized in the United States," including formerly enslaved people, and provided all citizens with “equal protection under the laws,” extending the provisions of the Bill of Rights to the states. The amendment authorized the government to punish states that abridged citizens’ right to vote by proportionally reducing their representation in Congress. It banned those who “engaged in insurrection” against the United States from holding any civil, military, or elected office without the approval of two-thirds of the House and Senate. The amendment prohibited former Confederate states from repaying war debts and compensating former slave owners for the emancipation of their enslaved people. Finally, it granted Congress the power to enforce this amendment, a provision that led to the passage of other landmark legislation in the 20th century, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Congress required former Confederate states to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment as a condition of regaining federal representation.

Nội dung chính Show

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.

Section 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.

Section 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.

Section 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.

Section 5.

The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Prior to the doctrine's (and the Fourteenth Amendment's) existence, the Supreme Court found the Bill of Rights to only apply to the Federal government and to federal court cases. During the signing of the Constitution, every state in the negotiation had different levels of concerns with a too powerful Federal government, and the preamble to the Bill of Rights highlights the importance of the Bill of Rights in limiting overreach by the newly created government. The Supreme Court noted that the Bill of Rights was clearly intended to limit only the federal government (see Barron v City of Baltimore (1833)). States and state courts could choose to adopt similar laws, but were under no obligation to do so.

After the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court, through a string of cases, found that the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth amendment included applying parts of the Bill of Rights to States (referred to as incorporation). A lot of contention surrounds whether the Fourteenth Amendment should incorporate any substantive rights, with opinions from Supreme Court justices ranging from complete to no incorporation (see substantive due process). Rather than find that the Due Process clause incorporates all of the Bill of Rights, the Supreme Court supported selectively incorporating rights that the Court finds as essential to due process. Under selective incorporation, the Supreme Court incorporated certain parts of certain amendments, rather than incorporating an entire amendment at once.

Some argue that the Privileges or Immunities Clause is a more appropriate textual basis than the due process clause for incorporation of the Bill of Rights but because Slaughter-House Cases dealing with this clause are surrounded by controversy this theory is not supported by the majority of the court.

As a note, the Ninth Amendment and the Tenth Amendment have not been incorporated, and it is unlikely that they ever will be. The text of the Tenth Amendment directly interacts with state law, and the Supreme Court rarely relies upon the Ninth Amendment when deciding cases.