Abstract This paper explains that, after the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that discrimination against African-Americans by private persons could be regarded as imposing slavery or involuntary servitude against them. The author describes the process that led to the creation and ratification of the 14thAmendment and outlines its powers. The author also presents Supreme Court cases and federal legislation based on this amendment, which supported anti-discrimination and the civil rights movement for not only African-Americans, but also all ethnic groups and new immigrants.
From the Paper "However, the Great Depression could be viewed as an event which truly helped black Americans, for it became necessary for the federal government to provide many of the necessities for life to those who were either trapped in abject poverty or had lost their jobs as a result of the stock market crash of 1929. For example, the federal government and the Roosevelt Administration provided food, employment, housing, old age dependency and to some extend health benefits to all Americans, including African-Americans who had been the most hard-hit by the Great Depression which lasted from 1929 to roughly 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor."
Tags: suffragettes, brown v. board of education of topeka, dred scott, state immigrants
Abstract This paper discusses the 14thAmendment to the U.S. Constitution. The author discusses the legal theory of selective incorporation-applying the Bill of Rights to the 14thAmendment's Due Process Clause. The paper examines such landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases as "Palko v. Connecticut", "Mapp v. Ohio", and "Adamson v. California".
From the Paper "The 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 of July 9, states, "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 it's jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." "Due Process" is mentioned in the 14th amendment as well as the 5th amendment. What exactly does "Due Process" means? Due Process means to be treated equally and fairly."
Abstract The paper discusses how the Fourteenth Amendment was designed and legislated during the Presidency of Andrew Johnson. The paper discusses how this amendment, although intended to act as a linchpin for freedom and equality for all African-Americans after the Civil War, actually created consequential conditions which only aggravated the true plight of these courageous and often overlooked people. The paper focuses on the years 1866 to 1918.
From the Paper "Following the appointment of Andrew Johnson as President of the United States on April 15, 1865, just one day after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, four states of the former Confederacy, namely, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee and Virginia, contained small groups of loyal men who had organized nominal state governments during the Civil War, all of which were recognized by Lincoln and then supported by Johnson. On May 29, 1865, Johnson appointed a provisional governor of North Carolina and told him to call a convention aimed at repealing the ordinance of secession and striking from the state constitution all references to slavery. Thus, with this simple process, President Johnson outlined identical plans for the reconstruction of the six remaining Confederate states."
Abstract This paper discusses the history and application of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the United States Constitution. The paper analyzes each amendment and describes its importance with regards to the close of the slavery era in the U.S. The paper also discusses the implications of the landmark court-case, Plessy v. Ferguson and how these amendments related to it.
Table of Contents:
The History of These Three Amendments Why Support These Amendments The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
Who Benefited From The 13th Amendment?
Hard-Line Southerners and Their Evil Deeds
The 14thAmendment to the U.S. Constitution
Plessy v. Ferguson
The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
From the Paper "In 1910, Arthur W. Machen wrote in the Harvard Law Review - forty years after the passage of the 15th - that this amendment has been "despised, flouted, nullified, evaded," and moreover, had never up to and through the time Machen wrote his piece, been backed by the High Court to assure the suffrage rights of black citizens. And indeed it took the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to truly move the country forward into an era that the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution were supposed to open the door for. Jim Crow and Southern segregation were alive and well even up into the 1960s in some Southern states, as witnessed by the fact that President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and U.S. Attorney General Bobby Kennedy had to send federal troops into Mississippi in 1962 to allow James Meredith to enter the University of Mississippi."
This well-researched paper focuses on the rights of non-English speaking students to receive a fair and adequate education as well as the 14thamendment which guarantees equal protection under the law with regard to race or national origin.
Abstract This in-depth paper examines the xenophobic feeling prevalent in U.S. society which is exemplified by the laws of several states that display a hostile attitude toward foreigners and foreign languages. The writer of this paper discusses the lack of adequate English instruction in the school system which prevents non-English speaking students from receiving a proper education. This paper focuses on language rights in the U.S., which is a component of other rights as stated in the 14thamendment, that guarantees equal protection under law with regard to race or national origin. This informative paper cites numerous legal cases including the landmark bilingual education class action case of Lau vs. Nichols brought by non-English Chinese speaking students against the San Francisco Unified School District. This paper also explores the effectiveness of the Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 that requires affirmative action by a school district in overcoming language barriers that impede a student's equal participation in the educational process.
From the Paper "Although not related to a foreign language, the case Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School Children v. Ann Arbor School District (1979) speaks to a lawsuit 11 black children brought against the AASD school board regarding an English dialect. According to the court, the plaintiffs assert that the children speak a version of "black English," otherwise known as Ebonics, as their community and home language, which impedes their equal participation in the educational process, and the school has not taken appropriate action to overcome the barrier. The District Court indicates that this case is an effort to require the school district to take appropriate action to teach the black children to read in standard English. Witnesses before the court testified that Ebonics is a language system that differs significantly from standard English and has been used at some time by 80 percent of the black people of this country. This dialect is especially prevalent in areas where there are concentrations of black people, and it contains aspects of Southern dialect that is used largely by black people in their casual conversation and informal talk."
Abstract This paper addresses three potential new amendments to the constitution. The first of the amendments discussed addresses school prayer. The second and third amendments discussed address term limits for both members of Congress and for the United States president. The final amendment proposed seeks to overturn Amendment 22 that limits a president to two terms of four years in office. It also proposes that a president be elected of one term of 9 years, with a provision that congress may remove the president and call for a new election after the president has served at least three years in office.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Amendment Number 28 Congressional Term Limits
Discussion
Amendment -33
Conclusion
From the Paper "This amendment attempts to satisfy two very different groups of people who have conflicting ideas about school prayer. On one hand, it allows individuals and groups to conduct public prayer in a public school setting. On the other hand, it still protects the separation of church and State that is part of the first Constitutional Amendment in the Bill of Rights. (Bill of Rights) It appears that the majority of people want prayer returned to public school. A survey by the Pittsburgh Courier received a significantly large positive response to the question "Should prayer be returned to public schools.""
Abstract This paper examines the effect of the Wright Amendment on Southwest Airlines. It explains that the Wright Amendment is a part of federal air transportation law in the United States that places arbitrary restrictions on common carrier air passenger traffic to and from Love Field in Dallas. The author explores why Southwest Airlines was against the Amendment.
From the Paper "The Wright Amendment was a special interest addition to a major bill dealing with the airline industry that was enacted in the late ..."
Abstract This paper presents a history of the Fourth Amendment. The paper defines the Fourth Amendment, explains what it entails from a legal perspective what it entails and discusses the history of search and seizure Legality.
From the Paper "The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads as follows: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. The Fourth Amendment protects the right of the people to be secure against..."
Abstract This paper provides a discussion of the history, creation and ratification of the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This Amendment repealed prohibition, and allowed the sale and consumption of alcohol to resume in the United States. The social climate in the era leading up to prohibition is discussed, as well as the results of prohibition. Some holes in the 21st Amendment are discussed in view of our current century. The author, however, concludes that the U.S. Constitution remains a living document that is capable of responding to changes in American society.
From the Paper "During 1933, laws were passed in 43 states that provided for conventions in that or the following year (with the exceptions of Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and North Dakota) (Livingston 211). During the same year conventions were held in thirty-eight states of which thirty-seven ratified the amendment and one (South Carolina) rejected it. The thirty-sixth ratification was received in the late afternoon of December 5, 1933 and the certificate was issued by the Secretary of State less than an hour later (Livingston 211).
On December 6, 1933, the thirty-seventh ratification was received from Maine; as a result, it required less than eleven months after its submission to the states for the amendment to be ratified by the requisite three-fourths and the ill-fated experiment of national prohibition ended (Livingston 211). One of the reasons the process went so smoothly may have been based on a misconception among lawmakers at the time. For example, in his essay, "No More 'Cherry-Picking,'" Aaron Nielson (2004) reports that the 21st Amendment achieved the required votes in each house of Congress without causing much substantive debate, most likely because the majority of Congressmen at the time considered section one of the amendment, the simple repeal of constitutional Prohibition, as being its main thrust: "It seems that sections two and three of the Amendment were seen as being primarily procedural sections, necessary to support and implement section one" (Nielson 281). The implications of that fateful misperception have come back to haunt legislators today, particularly as they apply to section two."
Abstract This paper examines the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution under the Bill of Rights. The author points out that this amendment prohibits unlawful searches and seizures on the part of the government and is aimed at protecting the security and privacy of individual citizens from government intrusions. The paper reviews the amendment and suggests some contemporary challenges to its authority.
From the Paper "Anyone who has ever watched any of the number of courtroom dramas broadcast on television these days will have heard of the Fourth Amendment. For lawyers, it seems to be a phrase tossed around with ease with the likes of probable cause and unlawful search and seizure. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution constitutes one of the most important elements of the modern American justice system, but is one part that is not so well understood by the general populace. Additionally, the increasing number of electronic crimes via computers and the Internet has made the Fourth Amendment even more difficult to understand and appropriately apply for citizens and lawmakers alike."
Describes a policy, adopted by Stanford Students, which restricts certain types of free speech and examines whether this policy conflicts with the first amendment or is a just application of John Stuart Mill's harm principle.
650 words (approx. 2.6 pages), 2 sources, 2002, $ 26.95
Abstract Stanford Students adopted a policy that made personally vilifying expressions an offense subject to penalties. The policy described outlawed expressions as "…words or non-verbal symbols…commonly understood to convey direct and visceral hatred or contempt for human beings on the basis of their sex, race, color, handicap, religion, or national or ethnic origin. This paper examines whether this policy should be ruled a violation of the First Amendment's right to free speech or whether it is a legitimate application of John Stuart Mill's harm principle.
Abstract This paper discusses how the United States Supreme Court has heard only five cases in relation to the Second Amendment to the Constitution. These cases include US v. Cruikshank, Presser v. Illinois, Miller v. Texas, US v. Miller, and Lewis v. US. In 1876 US v. Cruikshank was brought before the Supreme Court. The paper reviews the case of 1876, when U.S. v. Cruikshank was brought before the Supreme Court. The Court held that it was not an individual's right to "bear arms", that the ability of citizens to carry weapons was intended to address the need of the states to form a militia for the purpose of protecting the population.
Abstract This paper studies the 14thamendment to the U.S. Constitution. The paper discusses the original intent of the amendment, which was enacted to prevent Southern states from preventing the freeing of slaves. The author then focuses on the second section of the amendment, extending full citizenship -- i.e. the right to vote -- to the former slaves. The paper studies the motivating factors for Northern and Southern legislators' votes.
From the Paper "Following the Civil War the South resisted all attempts to free the slaves and grant them equal citizenship, even after the passing of the 13th Amendment. The southern states claimed that since they never legally left the Union, that once they voted for Congressmen and Senators they should have equal representation. The problem was the newly freed slaves did not have the right to vote in most southern states, because the newly elected governing bodies of these states passed a series of laws preventing them from working on equal terms and other aspects free white men shared."
Tags: slaves, freedom, right, to, vote, southern, northern, civil, war
Abstract This paper discusses three cases where a person's procedural rights were violated. In one, an illegal, warrantless search and seizure violating 4th and 14thAmendment rights; in the second an illegal warrant issued on information from an unproved informant violating 4th amendment rights, and in the third, a violation of 5th amendment rights in four cases where suspects were interrogated without being mirandized.
From the Paper "Mapp v Ohio Criminal Procedure Constitution and Society: In this case the police went to Mrs Mapp's residence on a tip that a suspected gambler involved in a bombing was residing there. They did not have a warrant so she refused to let them in ..."
Abstract This paper examines the Georgia lawsuit, Atlanta Motel vs. United States, 379 U.S. 241 (1964), which is about a motel restricting clientele to white customers only. The paper describes the legal battle for enforcing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the issue that it violates the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. The paper is written in legal format.
Table of Contents:
Citation
Facts
Previous Decision
Issue
Decision
Reasons
From the Paper "Reasons for the Lawsuit:
The appellant is the owner of a large motel (Heart of Atlanta Motel Inc.) in Atlanta, Georgia who restricts his clientele to white people, 75% of whom are inter-state travelers. He has filed a suit to perpetuate his policy of refusing rooms to Negroes. The defendants or appellees are the United States et al."
