POL SCI 40 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Fourteenth Amendment To The United States Constitution, Free Exercise Clause, Slaughter-House Cases
Document Summary
John a. bingham = father of the 14th amendment. Established notion of equality under the law. 14th amendment, as well as other reconstruction amendments sets the stage for the. Gop"s way to put results of the civil war into the constitution, so they could not be easily changed. Main responsibility for enforcement of 14th amendment = shifted to the courts. Supreme court simply did not see its main job to be the protection individual rights, and there were no civil rights organizations to ask it to. Federal courts are given a role in enforcing the 14th amendment alongside. Congress so, courts are given the power to enforce the 14th amendment. New obligation they were not used to, did not really want to do so. Slaughterhouse cases (1873) : the 14th amendment only protected rights relating to u. s. citizenship, and did not restrict states from utilizing their absolute powers.
