The most common defensive use of constitutional rights is by criminal defendants. Persons may also assert constitutional rights offensively, bringing a civil suit against the government or government officials for a variety of relief: declarative, injunctive and monetary.
In enforcing by appropriate legislation the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees against state denials, Congress has the discretion to adopt remedial measures, such as authorizing persons being denied their civil rights in state courts to remove their cases to federal courts, 2200 and to provide criminal 2201 and civil 2202 ...
Section 5 grants Congress the power to enforce the Amendment by "appropriate legislation." After adopting the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress passed legislation that criminalized insurrection. Today, this law is codified in 18 U.S. Code § 2383.
The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
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.
In enforcing by appropriate legislation the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees against state denials, Congress has the discretion to adopt remedial measures, such as authorizing persons being denied their civil rights in state courts to remove their cases to federal courts, 2200 and to provide criminal 2201 and civil 2202 ...
Introduced by Representative Samuel Shellabarger of Ohio, the KKK Act –officially known as an “Act to enforce the Provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and for other Purposes”—was the third of a set increasingly detailed efforts to curb the violence and protect African ...
The 14th Amendment also prohibited the states from denying to “any person the equal protection of the laws.” It also penalized states that denied suffrage to male citizens over the age of 21 by reducing population used for proportional representation and banned public officials who participated in insurrection or ...
14th Amendment - Citizenship Rights, Equal Protection, Apportionment, Civil War Debt | Constitution Center.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States granted citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to anyone born in the United States or who became a citizen of the country. This included African Americans and slaves who had been freed after the American Civil War.