how did the14th amendment weaken the states?

Answer 1

Amendment XIV. fn6 [ Annotations ]
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. 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.

Section. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section. 3. 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 legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section. 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."

Since the 14th amendment granted citizenship to everyone born in the United States and also banned states from limiting citizens' rights, depriving them of due process of law, or denying "any person . . . the equal protection of the laws."

it's hard for me to see how it "weakened the states."

"The amendment provides a broad definition of national citizenship, overturning a central holding of the Dred Scott case. It requires the states to provide equal protection under the law to all persons (not only to citizens) within their jurisdictions.
Current Supreme Court Justice David Souter has called this amendment "the most significant structural provision adopted since the original framing".[1] The true significance of the Amendment was not realized until the 1950s and 1960s, when it was interpreted to prohibit racial segregation in public schools and other facilities in Brown v. Board of Education."

Personally, I think that, if anything, it strengthened the states by strengthening the union of the states.

Please use the link below for more info about the 14th amendment.

Answer 2

State powers were weakened mainly by section 1 of the 14th 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. 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.


Notice that it says "no state shall," which thereby limits the powers of the States. The equal protection clause allowed Congress to intervene when it seemed that equal protection did not exist. This amdendment did not do much for blacks for many decades, but eventually the Supreme Court came to interpret it in such a way that seperate schools were deemed unconstitutional. It (combined with the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution) also allowed the Court to rule that racial discrimination in restauraunts, hotels, and the like could be prohibited by Congress. This deserves a much fuller treatment, but I took undergraduate Constitutional law 3 years ago, and am not going to be in law school for another year, so it isn't especially clear in my mind at the moment.

Answer 3

The 14th amendment did exactly what the people of the south were fighting against. It usurped power from the states for the federal gov't. The fed gov't was never inted to be the size or scope that it is today, most power was left to the individual states. Actually, the amendment is illegal in that it was never properly ratified. It was inacted during reconstruction and the southern states were forced into ratifing it. Read Politically Incorrect Guide to American History for more details.

Answer 4

The Fourteenth exchange (exchange XIV) to the united states shape is between the positioned up-Civil war Reconstruction Amendments, first meant to guard the rights of former slaves. It replaced into proposed on June c4ca4238a0b92382dcc509a6f75849b3, c4ca4238a0b92382dcc509a6f75849b866, and ratified on July 9, c4ca4238a0b92382dcc509a6f75849b868.[a million] The exchange aspects a huge definition of citizenship, overruling Dred Scott v. Sandford (c4ca4238a0b92382dcc509a6f75849b857) which had excluded slaves and their descendants from possessing Constitutional rights. The exchange demands states to grant equivalent risk-free practices below the regulation to all persons interior of their jurisdictions and replaced into used interior the mid-twentieth century to dismantle racial segregation interior the united states, as in Brown v. Board of practise (c4ca4238a0b92382dcc509a6f75849b954). Its Due technique Clause has been the inspiration of lots substantial and arguable case regulation concerning privateness rights, abortion (see Roe v. Wade), and different subjects. the different 2 Reconstruction Amendments are the thirteenth exchange (banning slavery) and the fifteenth exchange (banning race-based vote casting skills). interior the Slaughterhouse circumstances (c4ca4238a0b92382dcc509a6f75849b872), dissenting suitable courtroom Justice Swayne wrote, "quite construed, those amendments may be reported to upward push to the consideration of a clean Magna Carta."

Answer 5

What the 14th amendment did was apply the 5th amendment to the states. It applied equal protection and substantive and procedural due process. State actors (courts and government) were now bound to these federal rights in the way they treated their citizens even if the rights were not in the state constitution, or were interpreted differently than the federal rights by the US supreme court.
Try this law review article from Duke:
http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/lcp/articles/lcp67dsummer2004p175.htm

Answer 6

Before this point the States had always handled civil rights issues. The federal government had left those to the states.

Answer 7

I'm sorry; exactly what is the 14th amendment?