14th Amendment 
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SOURCE: Slate
6/1/2023
New Evidence: Rehnquist Pretty Much OK with Plessy v. Ferguson
by Richard Hasen and Dahlia Lithwick
A 1952 memo that Rehnquist wrote defending "separate but equal" was raised during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings and dismissed as work-for-hire. It is now clear that he supported the narrow interpretation of the 14th Amendment that the current court majority hopes to use to undermine civil rights.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
Why Everyone Born in the US is a Citizen, and Why it Matters
by Amanda Frost
In upholding birthright citizenship in the case of US v. Wong Kim Ark, the court invoked English common law, rather than claims to citizenship rights and freedom by escaped slaves, as the foundation of the 14th Amendment's definition of citizenship. This makes the principle vulnerable when it should be unassailable.
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/23/2023
The 14th Amendment Should Put a Stop to Debt Ceiling Hostage Taking
by Eric Foner
The provisions of the Reconstruction Amendments dealing with the national debt were tied to the nation's short-lived commitment to interracial democracy in the South; today they offer the Biden administration a possible tool to use if Congress pushes to the brink of default.
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SOURCE: Balls and Strikes
10/28/2022
Eric Foner: Originalism and the Color-Blind Constitution are Intellectually Indefensible
The historian says that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was on the right track to argue that the meaning of the 14th Amendment must be understood in context of its authors' intention to end the race-based subjugation of Black people.
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SOURCE: New York Times
10/28/2022
SCOTUS Affirmative Action Cases Hinge on History of Brown and the 14th Amendment
by Linda Greenhouse
Neither Brown nor the 14th Amendment were driven by a belief in a "colorblind" Constitution; instead, they were rooted in the historically specific context of racial oppression. The plaintiffs in two cases before the court want to obscure that history, says veteran court reporter Linda Greenhouse.
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SOURCE: NPR
10/17/2022
SCOTUS Declines to Hear Challenge to Citizenship Law Disadvantaging American Samoans
Residents of US territories are able to receive birthright citizenship if an act of Congress grants it to them. While Congress's refusal to do so for residents of American Samoa has clear racist roots, the Court declined to hear a case challenging this exclusion.
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SOURCE: Vox
8/2/2022
A Substantive Due Process Explainer: What Was the Basic Weakness of Roe?
The application of the 14th Amendment to extend broad guarantees of individual rights is recent; the history of the doctrine of substantive due process has more frequently been used to protect the interests of corporations and the powerful. It's time for a new legal approach.
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SOURCE: The New Republic
4/21/2022
Will the Dems Use 14th Amendment to Punish States for Voting Rights Crackdowns?
Congress is entitled under the Amendment to strip states of representation if they don't maintain a republican form of government. Do proposed voting rights restrictions and other red-state legislation qualify?
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SOURCE: Talking Points Memo
1/26/2022
Rep. Cawthorn Lawyer's Defense against 14th Amendment Disqualification? Confederate Amnesty Act
It is perhaps fitting that Cawthorn, who faces a challenge to his eligibility for office based on his endorsement of the march which led to the attack on the Capitol, would invoke an amnesty for Confederates as a defense.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
3/29/2021
The Lack of Federal Voting Rights Protections Returns Us to the Pre-Civil War Era
by Kate Masur
New vote suppression bills in multiple states threaten to return the United States not to the Jim Crow era but to the period before the Civil War and Reconstruction when civil and political rights were protected or denied according to state politics.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
2/16/2021
Congress Must Invoke the 14th Amendment to Stop Trump from Running Again
by Tom Coleman and John C. Danforth
A former Congressman and former Senator, both Republicans from Missouri, demand that Congress invoke the 14th Amendment's provisions on insurrection to bar Donald Trump from holding office in the future.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
11/12/2021
Impeachment May Not Work. Here’s the Next Best Way to Dump Trump
by Eric Foner
The 14th Amendment empowers Congress to bar persons involved in insurrection against the United States from holding office. This can't remove Trump, but it can stop him (and anyone found to have plotted the Capitol rioting) from returning to office.
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8/30/2020
Constitutional Textualism and Congressional Debate Over the 14th Amendment
by Alan J. Singer
Supreme Court decisions based on text without context have been responsible for some of the greatest perversions of justice in United States history, mostly around denying the scope of authority the 14th Amendment grants to the government to enforce civil equality.
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SOURCE: Vox
8/14/2020
Birtherism 2.0
by Matthew Yglesias
Right-wing challenges to Kamala Harris's eligibility for the presidency depend on a legal argument that American-born children of immigrants are a lesser category of citizen. There is no basis under the Constitution for this.
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8/16/2020
Of Course Kamala Harris is a Citizen
by Derek Litvak
John Eastman's claims that Kamala Harris is not a natural-born U.S. citizen fly in the face of 14th Amendment jurisprudence and Eastman's own prior defenses of Ted Cruz's eligibility for the presidency.
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8/16/2020
Citizenship, the 14th Amendment, and Trump’s War on Undocumented Immigrants
by Alan J. Singer
Recent attacks on Kamala Harris's citizenship and eligibility to serve as Vice President depend on willful misreading of the Fourteenth Amendment and ignorance of the specific racist injustices it was written to prevent.
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SOURCE: The Conversation
6/16/2020
US Congress could Use Reconstruction-Era Civil Rights Powers to Protect Black Lives Today
by Richard Johnson
The U.S. House of Representatives could use a provision of the 14th Amendment to strip congressional representation from states that suppress the voting rights of black residents.
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9/1/19
Restricting Automatic Citizenship to Children Born to Americans Serving Abroad Is Only the Latest Effort by Trump to Dismantle Birthright Citizenship
by Derek Litvak
Trump and conservatives are attempting a wholesale constitutional revolution by dismantling birthright citizenship. Here's why birthright citizenship is so historically important.
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1/16/19
William Barr Needs a History Lesson
by Derek Litvak
When conservatives claim birthright citizenship is not a part of the Constitution, they are ignoring America’s long history of slavery, discrimination, and segregation.
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SOURCE: Jacobin
12-4-18
First as Farce, Then as Tragedy
by Manisha Sinha
Donald Trump wants to destroy the 14th Amendment's guarantee of birthright citizenship. But before he sought to eliminate it outright, his elite predecessors mangled, misread, and misused the amendment in the service of capital.
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