Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
A major provision of the 14th Amendment was to grant citizenship to “All persons born or naturalized in the United States,” thereby granting citizenship to formerly enslaved people.
New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905), the Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment protects a general right to make private contracts, and that a state may not interfere with this liberty in the name of protecting the health of the worker. The Supreme Court continued with the liberty-of-contract doctrine in Adkins v.
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State ...
The right to due process of law and equal protection of the law now applied to both the federal and state governments. On June 16, 1866, the House Joint Resolution proposing the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was submitted to the states.
The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
The amendment's first section includes the Citizenship Clause, Privileges or Immunities Clause, Due Process Clause, and Equal Protection Clause.
The Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution contains a number of important concepts, most famously state action, privileges or immunities, citizenship, due process, and equal protection—all of which are contained in Section One.
Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment vests Congress with the authority to adopt “appropriate” legislation to enforce the other parts of the Amendment—most notably, the provisions of Section One.