| Abstract: | Although the Fourteenth Amendment has been the vehicle for anumber of transformations in the protection of rights, therehas been no consensus on what it means. The amendment is sometimesheld to have revolutionized the Constitution, in effect replacingthe traditional federal system with a more national system.It is also argued that the amendment essentially reaffirmedthe prewar Constitution. The truth appears to lie with neitherside: the drafters of the amendment attempted to "complete theConstitution," neither to reform it radically, nor to reaffirmit simply. In doing so, they unwittingly followed in the tracksof the original "father of the Constitution," James Madison,who believed the original Constitution to be defective in importantways. Proper attention to the context and the structure of thetext of the amendment reveals just how the amendment was to"complete the Constitution." So examined, the amendment revealsitself to be a precisely stated, clearly drafted text, containinga number of new constitutional principles. Properly understood,the amendment affords constitutional protection for rights alreadypossessed in some sense, but therefore unprotected in the oldConstitution. |
