Why is the 14th amendment so important?
It has a few major clauses that do a lot of work, Privileges and Immunities (P&I), substantive due process (SDP), procedural due process (PDP), and equal protection (EP). It also incorporated many (now most) of the bill of rights to apply to the states; they were originally only applied to the federal government. Procedural due process cases have established that the government must afford citizens due process if the citizens are deprived of funamental rights, like property or liberty rights. This often comes up in government benefit cases. For example, if the government terminates your welfare benefits, you are afforded some sort of procedure, Goldberg v. Kelly. The same goes if your liberty is at risk, like in a criminal case or a psyciatric commitment, see Vitek v. Jones. Substantive Due process cases challenge laws of general applicability on the grounds that the government doesn’t have a strong enough justificaiton for what its doing. All laws classify people into groups, jaywalke
The Fourteenth Amendment was originally ratified to protect the freedman from the abrogation of his rights by the Southern states. Looking to protect the African American, the amendment made him a citizen and forced the federal government to be responsible for him. The Fourteenth Amendment prohibited the States from denying or abridging the fundamental rights of every citizen and required them to grant all persons equal protection and due process . The Fourteenth Amendment was also very important much later on, in the 1950s and 1960s. While originally constructed to deal with the rights of freedmen, cases such as Brown vs. Board of Education, turned to a quite similar issue. Its interpretation came to be the legal heart of the civil rights movement of the `60s. The fourteenth amendment was arguably the most important of all. It radically changed the definition of the United States Citizen.
