DOES THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT GUARANTEE EQUAL JUSTICE FOR ALL?
Does the Fourteenth Amendment1 guarantee equal justice for all? Implicitly, this question asks whether the Supreme Court may transformatively interpret the Amendment to ban practices that were commonplace in 1868 or to create new constitutional rights that were unknown at that time.2 To answer this question, I need to address both the way in which the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equality and the way in which it protects individual rights. My conclusion is that the Fourteenth Amendment is not a license to the Supreme Court to engage in transformative change.
I begin with the equality guarantee in the Fourteenth Amendment On this point, I agree with John Harrison that the …
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