Constitutional law: Individual rights - Equal Protection Clause (Part 1 of 2)

Law School

The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws". It mandates that individuals in similar situations be treated equally by the law.

A primary motivation for this clause was to validate the equality provisions contained in the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which guaranteed that all citizens would have the guaranteed right to equal protection by law. As a whole, the Fourteenth Amendment marked a large shift in American constitutionalism, by applying substantially more constitutional restrictions against the states than had applied before the Civil War.

The meaning of the Equal Protection Clause has been the subject of much debate, and inspired the well-known phrase "Equal Justice Under Law". This clause was the basis for Brown v Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court decision that helped to dismantle racial segregation, and also the basis for many other decisions rejecting discrimination against, and bigotry towards, people belonging to various groups.

While the Equal Protection Clause itself applies only to state and local governments, the Supreme Court held in Bolling v Sharpe (1954) that the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment nonetheless imposes various equal protection requirements on the federal government via reverse incorporation.

2021-04-28 20 min

Available Results

Generated results are saved to your library for reuse and search.

No generated results are available for this episode yet.

Transcript

No transcript is available for this episode yet.
Sign in to generate a transcript for review.
Sign in

Chapters

No chapters available.