The Bill of Rights, the Fourteenth Amendment and the Supreme Court

This chapter focuses on Justice Hugo Black, the most prominent modern advocate of constitutional textualism to sit on the Supreme Court, revealing the unwritten understandings that drive Black’s textualist jurisprudence. Justice Black was most famous for advocating that the Fourteenth Amendment applied to the Bill of Rights to the states. Black argued that the liberty protected by the due process clause included, and only included, rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Black was famous for his constitutional literalism, pointing to his pocket Constitution to ask where a right like “privacy” was found in the Constitution. Yet Black’s own interpretation relied on his desire to cabin and limit judicial will much more than on constitutional text. It was Black’s understanding of the role of the judiciary in a democracy—and not constitutional text—that drove his jurisprudence of incorporation.

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Legal Aid for Children: Some Reflections

Children Australia ◽

10.1017/s0312897000016416 ◽

1979 ◽

Vol 4 (4) ◽

pp. 29-32

Author(s):

Brian Lucas

Keyword(s):

United States Of America ◽

Due Process ◽

Juvenile Court ◽

The United States ◽

Fourteenth Amendment ◽

Court System ◽

Bill Of Rights ◽

Legal Aid ◽

Legal Representation ◽

The Supreme Court

In its Second Main Report, Law and Poverty in Australia, the Commission of Inquiry into Poverty expressed the view that “legal representation for children appearing before the children's court, whether in the criminal or protective jurisdiction, is necessary if justice is to be done.”This view coincides with the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in In re Gault. It has been said that this decision “unleashed a frontal assault on the juvenile court system.” It confirmed that juveniles were entitled to “due process” and the same protection which the Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights afforded to adults.

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How Trains Became People: Southern Pacific Railroad Co.’s Networked Rhetorical Culture and the Dawn of Corporate Personhood

Journal of Communication Inquiry ◽

10.1177/0196859918810383 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 43 (2) ◽

pp. 194-213

Author(s):

Nicholas S. Paliewicz

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Supreme Court ◽

Human Subject ◽

The United States ◽

Fourteenth Amendment ◽

Corporate Personhood ◽

Legal Discourses ◽

The Supreme Court ◽

Pacific Railroad ◽

Southern Pacific Railroad

This essay analyzes how a rhetorical culture emerged in which the Supreme Court of the United States assumed corporations were constitutional persons under the Fourteenth Amendment. Approaching rhetorical culture from a networked standpoint, I argue that corporate personhood emerged from Southern Pacific Railroad Co.’s networks and alliances with environmental preservationists, politicians, publics, lawyers, judges, and immigrants in the late 19th century. Contributing to literatures on rhetorical culture and agency, this study shows how Southern Pacific Railroad Co., through networks of influence and force, was a rhetorical subject that shaped a networked rhetorical culture that expanded the boundaries of the Fourteenth Amendment even though the Supreme Court of the United States had not worked out the philosophical underpinnings of corporate personhood. Corporate personhood remains theoretically restrained by legal discourses that reduce subjectivity to a singular, speaking, human subject.

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