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The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment: Its Letter and Spirit Hardcover – November 2, 2021
Randy E. Barnett (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
Evan D. Bernick (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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A renowned constitutional scholar and a rising star provide a balanced and definitive analysis of the origins and original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Adopted in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment profoundly changed the Constitution, giving the federal judiciary and Congress new powers to protect the fundamental rights of individuals from being violated by the states. Yet, according to Randy Barnett and Evan Bernick, the Supreme Court has long misunderstood or ignored the original meaning of the amendment’s key clauses, covering the privileges and immunities of citizenship, due process of law, and the equal protection of the laws.
Barnett and Bernick contend that the Fourteenth Amendment was the culmination of decades of debates about the meaning of the antebellum Constitution. Antislavery advocates advanced arguments informed by natural rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the common law. They also utilized what is today called public-meaning originalism. Although their arguments lost in the courts, the Republican Party was formed to advance an antislavery political agenda, eventually bringing about abolition. Then, when abolition alone proved insufficient to thwart Southern repression and provide for civil equality, the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted. It went beyond abolition to enshrine in the Constitution the concept of Republican citizenship and granted Congress power to protect fundamental rights and ensure equality before the law. Finally, Congress used its powers to pass Reconstruction-era civil rights laws that tell us much about the original scope of the amendment.
With evenhanded attention to primary sources, The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment shows how the principles of the Declaration eventually came to modify the Constitution and proposes workable doctrines for implementing the key provisions of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment.
- Print length488 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBelknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press
- Publication dateNovember 2, 2021
- Dimensions6.25 x 1.75 x 9.25 inches
- ISBN-100674257766
- ISBN-13978-0674257764
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“By any standard an important contribution to the ongoing discussion of the subject…[A] must-read.”―Earl M. Maltz, National Review
“A major contribution to our understanding of what many consider the single most important amendment to the Constitution. It may well reshape our understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment.”―Ilya Somin, Volokh Conspiracy
“The most detailed legal history to date of the constitutional amendment that changed American law more than any before or since…The corpus of legal scholarship is richer for it.”―Washington Examiner
“As complete an account of the intellectual and political origins of the Fourteenth Amendment as one could hope for. As a work of history, it bristles with surprises. As a contribution to constitutional theory, it poses challenging new questions for both originalists and nonoriginalists.”―Richard H. Fallon Jr., author of Law and Legitimacy in the Supreme Court
“Evincing the highest academic values of openness, integrity, and truth-seeking, this book reflects a systematic and even-handed consideration of the origins and original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, one of the most vital subjects in constitutional law. The definitive treatment of the subject for years and decades to come.”―Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash, author of The Living Presidency
“Provides fresh and interesting―and sometimes surprising―arguments about how best to interpret the Fourteenth Amendment. A major theme of the book is that both liberal and conservative judges have been significantly mistaken in their interpretations of the amendment. This book is designed to set them straight and to provide guidance for new and better interpretations. A truly excellent and challenging analysis of the historical record.”―Sanford V. Levinson, author of Framed: America’s 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance
“An outstanding account of the original public meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s most important provisions. Comprehensive and clear, methodical and elegantly written, this work shines new light on the meaning and spirit of the Reconstruction Framers’ work. Anyone who wants to understand the Fourteenth Amendment―one of the great achievements of American constitutionalism―should consult this book.”―Jack M. Balkin, Yale Law School
“Antislavery constitutionalism meets modern originalism in this sweeping reading of the original public meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Engaging for critics and adherents of originalism alike, this inventive fusion of history and constitutional theory catapults Republican antislavery to the forefront of today’s rights disputes.”―Pamela Brandwein, author of Rethinking the Judicial Settlement of Reconstruction
“The Fourteenth Amendment, by far the longest of the momentous Reconstruction Amendments, is a landmark in the continuing struggle for racial equality in America, but its importance hardly ends there. Its political as well as legal origins, meanwhile, carry profound significance for the history of race, citizenship, the US Constitution, and much more. In this breakthrough book, Barnett and Bernick brilliantly explore the amendment's origins while grappling with its original meaning, in ways that will command attention from historians as well as legal scholars and constitutional lawyers.”―Sean Wilentz, author of No Property in Man
About the Author
Evan D. Bernick is Assistant Professor of Law at Northern Illinois University College of Law. He was previously Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center. His scholarship appears in the Georgetown Law Journal, Notre Dame Law Review, and William & Mary Law Review.
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Product details
- Publisher : Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press (November 2, 2021)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 488 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0674257766
- ISBN-13 : 978-0674257764
- Item Weight : 1.85 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.25 x 1.75 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #24,508 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #9 in U.S. Abolition of Slavery History
- #9 in Legal History (Books)
- #37 in General Constitutional Law
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Randy E. Barnett is the Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches constitutional law and contracts, and is the Faculty Director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. After graduating from Northwestern University and Harvard Law School, he tried many felony cases as a prosecutor in the Cook County States’ Attorney’s Office in Chicago. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies, Professor Barnett has been a visiting professor at Penn, Northwestern and Harvard Law School.
Professor Barnett’s publications includes twelve books, more than one hundred articles and reviews, as well as numerous op-eds. In 2004, he argued the medical marijuana case of Gonzalez v. Raich before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2012, he was one of the lawyers representing the National Federation of Independent Business in its constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act. Recently, he appeared on PBS’s Constitution USA with Peter Sagal; and he portrayed a prosecutor in the 2010 science-fiction feature film, InAlienable.
He is addicted to Amazon Prime.
Evan Bernick is an Assistant Professor of Law at the Northern Illinois University College of Law. He teaches courses in constitutional law, criminal law, criminal procedure, administrative law and legislation.
From 2020 to 2021, Professor Bernick was a visiting professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and the executive director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. Before that, he served as a clerk to Judge Diane S. Sykes of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. From April 2017 to April 2019, he was a visiting lecturer at Georgetown and a resident fellow of the Center for the Constitution.
His scholarship covers a range of topics, from constitutional law, to philosophy of law, to social movements, to law enforcement. He has published with the Georgetown Law Journal, the Notre Dame Law Review, the William and Mary Law Review and the George Mason Law Review, among other journals. His book, The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment: Its Letter and Spirit (2021), with Randy E. Barnett, was published by Harvard University Press under its Belknap imprint "for books of long-lasting importance, superior in scholarship and physical production, chosen whether or not they might be profitable."
Professor Bernick received his bachelor's degree in 2008 from the University of Chicago, where he studied philosophy and graduated with honors. He received his juris doctorate in 2011 from the University of Chicago Law School.
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Non-Objective Sources can be defined as
(1) No educational standard/No objective criteria of not analysing the pros and cons of the premises attested in the original intent of the 14 amendment or other sources that augment misinformation to falsely cause a false corollary.