Equal Citizenship, Civil Rights, and the Constitution: The Original Sense of the Privileges or Immunities Clause - Paperback

by Christopher Green (Author)

The Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is arguably the most historically important clause of the most significant part of the US Constitution. Designed to be a central guarantor of civil rights and civil liberties following Reconstruction, this clause could have been at the center of most of the country's constitutional controversies, not only during Reconstruction, but in the modern period as well; yet for a variety of historical reasons, including precedent-setting narrow interpretations, the Privileges or Immunities Clause has been cast aside by the Supreme Court. This book investigates the Clause in a textualist-originalist manner, an approach increasingly popular among both academics and judges, to examine the meanings actually expressed by the text in its original context.

Author Biography

Christopher Green is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law, USA. His articles on the relationship of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection and Privileges or Immunities Clauses have been cited by Justice Stevens in McDonald vs. Chicago and by many scholars. He has also published work on the relationship of the philosophy of language and constitutional theory, the Constitution's self-definition, the nature of corporations, and epistemology.