Equality under the Constitution : Reclaiming the Fourteenth Amendment / Judith A. Baer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Baer, Judith A., author.

en Book Program, National Endowment for the Humanities Op, Author.

Contributor:

en Book Program, funder.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States. Constitution--14th Amendment.

United States.

Equality before the law--United States.

Equality before the law.

Civil rights--United States.

Civil rights.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (308 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cornell University Press 2018

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Biography/History:

Judith Baer is Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University. She is the author of Our Lives Before the Law: Constructing a Feminist Jurisprudence, which won the American Political Science Association's Victoria Schuck Award, and Ironic Freedom: Personal Choice, Public Policy, and the Politics of Reform and coauthor of Constitutional and Legal Rights for Women.

Summary:

The principle of equality embedded in the Declaration of Independence and reaffirmed in the Constitution does not distinguish between individuals according to their capacities or merits. It is written into these documents to ensure that each and every person enjoys equal respect and equal rights. Judith Baer maintains, however, that in fact American judicial decisions have consistently denied individuals the form of equality to which they are legally entitled-that the courts have interpreted constitutional guarantees of equal protection in ways that undermine the original intent of Congress. In Equality under the Constitution, Baer examines the background, scope, and purpose of the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment and the history of its interpretation by the courts. She traces the development of the idea of equality, drawing on the Bill of Rights, Congressional records, the Civil War amendments, and other sections of the Constitution. Baer discusses many of the significant equal-protection cases decided by the Supreme Court from the time of the amendment's ratification, including decisions on reverse discrimination, age discrimination, the rights of the disabled, and gay rights. She concludes with a theory of equality more faithful to the history, language, and spirit of the Constitution.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

1. Introduction

2. Equality in the American Context

3. The Roots of Equal Protection

4. Equality and the Reconstruction Congress

5. From Equal Protection to Suspect Classification

6. When Equal Is Not the Same

7. The Question of Age

8. The Rights of the Disabled

9. Gay Rights and the Courts

10. Toward a Theory of Constitutional Equality

Bibliography

General Index

Index of Cases

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

This eBook is made available Open Access. Unless otherwise specified in the content, the work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0 https://www.degruyter.com/dg/page/open-access-policy

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Sep 2018)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781501727757

1501727753

9781501722745

1501722743

OCLC:

1028943236

Access Restriction:

Open access Unrestricted online access