The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The … See more

Though equality under the law is an American legal tradition arguably dating to the Declaration of Independence, formal equality for many groups remained elusive. Before passage of the Reconstruction Amendmen… See more

With the return to originalist interpretations of the Constitution, many wonder what was intended by the framers of the reconstruction amendments at the time of their ratification. The Thirteenth Amendmen… See more

Bingham said in a speech on March 31, 1871 that the clause meant no State could deny anyone "the equal protection of the Constitution of the United States ... [or] any of the rights which it guarantees to all men", nor deny t… See more

In the United States, 1877 marked the end of Reconstruction and the start of the Gilded Age. The first truly landmark equal protection decision by the Supreme Court was Strauder v. West Virginia (1880). A black man … See more

In the decades after ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the vast majority of Supreme Court cases interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment dealt with the rights of corporations, not with the rights of African Am… See more