The Second Founding
An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment

In The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment, Ilan Wurman provides an illuminating introduction to the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment's famous provisions 'due process of law,' 'equal protection of the laws,' and the 'privileges' or 'immunities' of citizenship. He begins by exploring the antebellum legal meanings of these concepts, starting from Magna Carta, the Statutes of Edward III, and the Petition of Right to William Blackstone and antebellum state court cases. The book then traces how these concepts solved historical problems confronting framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, including the comity rights of free blacks, private violence and the denial of the protection of the laws, and the notorious abridgment of freedmen's rights in the Black Codes. Wurman makes a compelling case that, if the modern originalist Supreme Court interpreted the Amendment in 'the language of the law,' it would lead to surprising and desirable results today.

Introduction; Part I. Antebellum Law: 1. Due process of law; 2. Protection of the laws; 3. The privileges and immunities of citizenship; Part II. From Abridgment to War and Ratification: 4. abridgement of rights before and after the civil war; 5. The fourteenth amendment; 6. Privileges, immunities, and incorporation; Part III. The Modern Era: 7. The past and future of the fourteenth amendment; Endnotes.

Ilan Wurman is an Associate Professor of Law at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, where he teaches constitutional law. He is the author of A Debt Against the Living: An Introduction to Originalism (Cambridge 2017), and publishes on administrative law and constitutional law in the nation's top law journals.