The Fourteenth Amendment was badly written. Its language of "no state shall" opened it up to interpretation as applying only to action by the states, and its reference to "privileges or immunities" left it vague how broad or narrow these were. In the Slaughterhouse and Civil Rights Cases respectively, SCOTUS gave it these narrow readings and thereby betrayed the hopes of the Republicans who passed the amendment through Congress and wanted to root out most, if not all, the vestiges of race slavery. The book is worth reading even for the final chapter alone, which explains how this happened.

Could the interpretive history of A14 have gone differently? The book indicates dissents and arguments that would have done so. Did privileges and immunities include all the Bill of Rights and more? Could the enforcement clause empower Congress to step in with federal authority where states refused to protect civil rights or implement equal protection of the law? Did the federal government indeed retain the power to enforce rights expressly or impliedly set out in the Constitution?

It was a disaster at the time, with white mobs terrorizing African Americans as SCOTUS forbade the US government from taking action against them, but I'm not convinced it matters much today. By back-roads and byways of the Constitution, America has enacted most of the laws that Radicals foresaw: a public accommodations law under the Commerce Clause, even a Fair Housing Act with a fairly sweeping disparate impact construction put on it, a racial hate-crime law under the Thirteenth Amendment badges of slavery doctrine (blessedly unmarred by a state action clause), a Voting Rights Act against racial discrimination under the Fifteenth, and eventually incorporating the Bill of Rights under the guise of deprivation of liberty without due process.

What is wrong with the federal government's role in race in America today is not so much what it cannot do, but what it will not do. For example: regulate federal elections to prevent voter suppression and gerrymandering, require public housing it funds to be sited in areas with good jobs and schools, mandate civil rights training standards for police forces it funds. No hiding behind the state action doctrine! ( )

Not that great. Better off with the full Reconstruction tome by the same fellow. This follows the career of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, along with the 1866 Civil Rights act - but to my reading in a bit of muddled way. Meaning he sorts of drifts between the contemporaneous debates on these items and the many changes / compromises that were part of that record, and then hearkens forward to later application of the item under discussion. Probably it is on me and my too casual reading (sorry) but I got muddled up often enough about just where we were and what we were talking about. Well intentioned of course and history with an agenda... ( )

Excellent summary of the post-Civil War constitutional amendments. ( )

It's just so g*****n bleak. We've done this before, and given in at the finish line. We are one more federal election way from a minority party nullifying election results they don't like. The terrible thing is that would mean the cynics were right all along. ( )

5708. The Second Founding How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution, by Eric Foner (read 25 Sep 2020) This little book is the fourth book by Foner I have read. It tells the interesting story as to how the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution came to be added. He also relates how the Supreme Court has handled those amendments--in this the 14th has been most interpreted, in many cases involving issues unrelated to why it was adopted. He shows that the Supreme Court weakened the amendment in the 19th century and that weakening has not been set aside by the Court, so that students of constitutional law have a lot more trouble understanding that amendment than one would expect..Relatively few cases involving the 13th and 15th amendments have occurred whereas the 14rh has given rise to much litigation indeed, much unrelated to what it ostensibly was enacted to cure. ( )