The Power of the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution - Research Paper Example

The Power of the Fourteenth Amendment Introduction The fourteenth amendment of the constitution of the United States was adopted in 1868. This amendment was adopted as one of the reconstructive amendment. The reconstructive amendments denied the state the right to deprive any individual of their liberty, life or even property without following the legal process. It also prohibited the states from denying equal protection for any individual within its jurisdiction. The fourteenth amendment granted equal civil and legal rights as well as citizenship to the African Americans and the slaves of the American civil war. They were thus included in the phrase all persons born or naturalized in the United States had the right to be given American citizenship. The power of the fourteenth amendment is well expressed in its five sections: The section one argues that all individuals born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are United States citizens and citizens they live in according to Wagner (2000). It forbids the state from exercising a law that abridges the United States citizens’ privileges and immunities. According to this section, the state has no right to deprive individuals their property, life or liberty without following the legal process. It also ensures that any person within a state’s jurisdiction is equally protected. Since the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1971, the fourteenth amendment remains the most important amendment in protecting the rights of the individuals. The amendment was driven by the incidence of civil wars in the United States. Initially, this section only defined citizenship and offered protection to the civil and political rights of the individual hence less powerful. Its limitation was that the Africans could not possess United States citizenship and could not enjoy any citizenship privileges and immunities. The amendment gained power to protect the southern states from discriminating against the liberated blacks after their defeat in the civil war. The first section of the fourteenth amendment has a lot of powers in the constitution which is expressed in different clauses. One of the clauses is the citizenship clause which holds it that any person born in America is granted full citizenship. Under the initial constitution anyone regarded as a United States citizen was first to become a citizen of a certain state in the country. This could not apply to the emancipated citizens, the need of the clause to define citizenship. It meant that a United States’ citizen was also a citizen of a state he/she resided in. The power of the clause has been subjected to different interpretations. It author argued that it had similar content with the original one and it only varied in wording. According to Bosniak (2008), the meaning of this clause was tested in 1884 to establish whether a person born in the United States was automatically granted national citizenship. It was held by the Supreme Court that the Native Americans who left their tribes voluntarily could not automatically acquire national citizenship. The court also claimed that under this clause, a person born in the American soil to a Chinese citizen permanently leaving in US on business and not under official or diplomatic employment were guaranteed American citizenship. The same was also meant to apply to children who belonged to foreign national but not of Chinese descent. The power of this clause also maintains it that, children neither of United States citizens nor foreign diplomats, but born there were guaranteed citizenship after birth. However it was argued under this clause that, Children belonging to ambassadors as well as foreign ministers were excluded from citizenship. Loss of citizenship is another powerful clause section one of the fourteenth amendment. This clause gives two conditions under which individual can lose their citizenship. These conditions are Fraud in the process of naturalization and relinquishing citizenship voluntarily according to Anzalone (2002). According to this clause, if a person voluntarily acquires or exercises foreign citizenship it is considered a sufficient reason to be deprived of their national citizenship. This concept was given its power in a series of treaties. However the Supreme Court referring to the citizenship clause prohibits the Congress from revoking citizenship. The third clause giving power to the section one of the fourteenth amendment is the due process clause. This clause holds it that the state has no mandate to pass laws which are unfair to the citizens. Initially, depriving individuals their life, property or liberty was in punishment of a crime that the individual commits. The due process requires fair procedures such as notifying the defendant and conducting an open trial as suggested by Rossum and Tarr (2009). The court adds more power to this clause and argues that the due process does limit itself to procedures of considerations but it has a substantive aspect. This means that even after following the right legal procedures, the substantive basis under which individuals are deprived their life, property or liberty may interfere with the due process. On the same clause, the court expands procedures of the due process, thus there is a need of hearing before terminating or expelling employees or students. This clause also requires that a judge should be in a position to rescue them if they considered as conflict of interest. The most significant aspect of the due process clause is that it is used in applying the bill of rights in the states. The fourth clause giving power to the section one of the fourteenth amendment is the equal protection clause. The clause is interpreted by the court to offer substantive protection to personal contracts and thus inhibiting various social and economic practices. This freedom is regarded as freedom of contract. According to Schultz (2009), the equal protection clause invalidates corporation restraints which excluded other businesses. Initially it was used in fostering personal economic rights. The African Americans claimed that they were discriminated by private contract owners thus denying them equal protection. After a case held in1896, the court declared that states could offer segregated opportunities to the African American provided the opportunities are equal to those of white Americans. This led to the adoption of the separate but equal doctrine. Recently the equal protection has been powerfully used to invalidate the legislations which are discriminative to women. It has also been used by the court to confer to the states protection against discriminating on the privacy right and the right of women in matters of abortion. The second section of the fourteenth amendment gives power in the appointment of representatives. It argues that representatives shall be apportioned among the states according to their respective numbers as suggested by Smith (2003). It counts the number of individuals in every state apart from the un-taxed Indians. This section is based on the three-fifths clause found in the original constitution. The original constitution limited the power of this clause as it counted the slaves as three-fifth of an individual in order to apportion representation in the congress. With the outlawing of slavery in thirteenth amendment, the section two of fourteenth amendment gains power in clarifying that all individuals despite their race should be counted as one person. Section two also maintains it that all citizens who are male and reached the age of twenty one and above irrespective their race, had voting right. Later amendments gave more power to the section as the women were also given the right to vote and the voting age was lowered to eighteen years of age. The Supreme Court holds it that this section is important as it represents the states justification of its disenfranchising felons. The section’s power is demonstrated in its reduced representation which solves the issue of electoral abuse. In achieving this, it counts all residents are counted for appointment as opposed to the three-fifths counting of slaves applied in the original constitution. The section also gives the power to decrease apportionment of the state of it prohibits the adult male from voting and permits those not allowed by the law. It can be argued that the power of the section two of the fourteenth amendment is that it gives the state two options in election process. That is to either enfranchise African males in elections or else lose a considerable portion of their seats in congress and electoral votes. The section also has a provision which is intended to protect blacks from suffrage but it has not been implemented. It is in this provision that power of the state to abridge the citizens the right to vote in regard to their race, color or a life condition is prohibited. Thus it is important to not that section two of the fourteenth amendment protects against discrimination on the right to vote. The third section denies political office those officers who after they were sworn to uphold the constitution of the United States, violate the oath. It holds it that no individual shall be given a senator, congress representative, president or vice-president or any public office who previously had taken an oath of office supporting the constitution and abused it as suggested by Conlin (2009). However, the congress can remove this type of disability through a vote of two-third of each house. Section three made it impossible for the former confederacy leaders to be given power by the president to remain in office after they violated the citizenship clause of the constitution. However, this amendment had to be passed by two-thirds majority vote of the congress for the confederate leaders to regain American citizenship rights. The power of the section three is that it denied state or federal office anyone who .engaged in rebellion or gave support to enemies at the time of the civil war. Te section three of the fourteenth amendment in its power in summary argues that no individual who engages in a treasonous action is given a position in the federal government, military, state or judge office. However if this has to happen, the congress is required to pass a two-thirds majority vote to downplay limit the power of the provision. The fourth section also gives power to the fourteenth amendment of the US constitution. This section confirms the validity of public debts in the United States that the congress legislates as suggested by Menez, Vile and Bartholomew (2004). The power of this section is that it prohibits the state from paying for the loss of slaves or confederacy debts. It holds it that such debts or claims are subject to be held illegal and void. The section four of fourteenth amendment rejected any type of payment made to slave owners to compensate for their lost property. This way the section protects the northern politicians, leaders of the military and its businessmen who gained financially during the war from any prosecution in future. It also ensured that the northern people were not held responsible for the crimes they committed in the south. Therefore one of the powerful importances of the fourth section is that it protected the northern citizens from bearing the consequences of the war because of the debts they held from the south. The fifth section which expresses the power of the fourteenth amendment gives power to the congress to enforce the provisions of this article through an appropriate legislation according to Vile (2010). Through this section, the congress is empowered to implement the fourteenth amendment in accordance with the law. However the limitation is that it does not define the ways of enforcement. Conclusion Generally the fourteenth amendment made the United States constitution a mockery. For instance the sections two and three in their powers negatively interfered with the due process clause mentioned in the constitution’s Fifth Amendment. These sections denied the southerners their civil as well as political rights on an accusation which was later established to be vague with no significant evidence. However despite its powers, the fourteenth amendment fails to explain how it ought to be enforced as suggested by May and Ides (2007). As a result, most of the methods which have been used by the congress to enforce this amendment are said to be unconstitutional. For instance, the federal government has threatened to take serious actions on government offices if they fail to meet their expectations, but the constitution has not given it powers to take such actions. Therefore it can be argued that the fourteenth amendment cannot be enforced or it provides to the federal government powers which are undefined. References: Anzalone, C. (2002). Supreme Court cases on political representation, 1787-2001. Armonk NY: M.E. Sharpe. Bosniak, L. (2008). The Citizen and the Alien: Dilemmas of Contemporary Membership. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Conlin, J. (2009). The American Past: A Survey of American History. Auckland: Cengage Learning. May, C. & Ides, A. (2007). Constitutional law national power and federalism: examples and explanations. New York, NY: Aspen Publishers Online. Menez, J. Vile, J. & Bartholomew,P. (2004). Summaries of leading cases on the Constitution. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. Rossum, R & Tarr, G. (2009). American Constitutional Law: The Bill of Rights and Subsequent Amendments. Colorado: Westview Press. Schultz,D. (2009). Encyclopedia of the United States Constitution, Volume 1. New York NY: Infobase Publishing. Smith, R. (2003). Encyclopedia of African-American politics. New York, NY: Infobase Publishing. Vile, J. (2010). A companion to the United States Constitution and its amendments. California: ABC-CLIO. Wagner, F. (2000). United States Reports, Volume 523: Cases Adjudged in the Supreme Court at October Term, 1997, March 3 through May 26, 1998. Washington D. C: Government Printing Office. Read More