Reconstruction Amendments · The single most litigated amendment in the Constitution
Ratified in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment redefined citizenship, extended due process and equal protection to the states, and became the constitutional foundation for more Supreme Court cases than any other single amendment — from school desegregation to marriage equality to abortion rights.
No State shall…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.
Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1, ratified 1868
Three Clauses That Reshaped American Law
Birthright citizenship, written directly into the text
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens.” This directly overturned Dred Scott‘s holding that Black Americans couldn’t be citizens, settling the question the Thirteenth Amendment alone hadn’t fully resolved.
Extended the Fifth Amendment’s promise to the states
The original Bill of Rights restrained only the federal government. The Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause is the textual hook courts have used to apply most of the Bill of Rights against state governments too — a process called incorporation, built case by case over more than a century.
The basis for nearly every modern discrimination case
“Equal protection of the laws” is the constitutional foundation for challenges to racial segregation, sex discrimination, and unequal treatment by state governments generally — the single most cited clause in modern civil rights litigation.
Five Landmark Cases
No other amendment on this site links to more documented landmark cases — a real reflection of how much of modern constitutional law runs through this amendment’s text.
Brown v. Board of EducationOverturned Plessy, ruled segregated schools inherently unequal.→
Roe v. WadeFound a constitutional right to abortion under the Due Process Clause.→
Obergefell v. HodgesEstablished a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.→
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s HealthOverturned Roe, returning abortion regulation to the states.→
Two of these five cases directly overturned each other
A common misconception is that landmark Supreme Court rulings, once decided, are permanent. Brown directly overturned Plessy nearly six decades later, and Dobbs directly overturned Roe after almost fifty years. Both reversals happened under the exact same constitutional text — nothing in the Fourteenth Amendment’s wording changed between either pair of rulings. What changed was the Court’s own interpretation of what that text requires, a real and recurring feature of constitutional law, not an anomaly.
