We the People: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Supreme Court

Abstract

Several of the most divisive "moral" conflicts that have beset us Americans in the period since the end of World War II have been transmuted into "constitutional" conflicts -- conflicts about what the Constitution of the United States forbids -- and resolved as such. The most prominent instances include the conflicts over racial segregation, race-based affirmative action, sex-based discrimination, homosexuality, abortion, and physician-assisted suicide, each of which has been resolved -- at least in part, and at least for a time -- on the basis of a claim about what the Fourteenth Amendment does or does not forbid. Which of these conflicts, understood as "constitutional" conflicts, have been resolved as they should have been resolved? This book pursues that inquiry, but only after addressing several prior, fundamental questions: What is "the Constitution"? What does it mean to interpret the Constitution? Is the Supreme Court supreme in interpreting the Constitution? And precisely what norms did "We the People" establish in making the Fourteenth Amendment a part of the Constitution?