Ratification Of The 14th Amendment Essay

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Pages: 6

Following the passage and ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868, the United States courts on state and federal levels were faced with the task of determining the implementation and interpretation of the various rights expressed in the amendment. Most prominent of these interpretations was the constitutionality of protective laws as a result of a second period of mass industrialization in the later half of the 19th century and early 20th century. In conjunction with the laissez faire economics of the period, many efforts to guarantee or expand protections for laborers and women were thwarted by judicial opinions favoring freedom of contract, fundamental rights to liberty and property, and the hesitancy of the court to grant state “policing powers” under the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment. After decades of legislative efforts …show more content…
In the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873) the dissenting opinion written by Justice Stephen Field argued that the “privileges and immunities designated...belong to the citizens of all free governments” and that fundamental rights and liberties are protected from government interference (H243). Field’s interpretation of “no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens” was to guarantee individual and corporate rights from intrusion of state power (A14.1). While Justice Field was of the dissenting opinion, his interpretation of the 14th Amendment’s due process and equal protection clauses would become the judicial precedent adopted in many majority opinions in the following decades and would hinder many states’ initiatives to pass progressive legislation to improve the workplace and livelihoods of workers and