Because many states continued to pass laws that restricted the rights of former slaves, on June 13, 1866, Congress passed and sent to the states for ratification, Amendment XIV. Ratified on July 9, 1868, the amendment granted U.S. citizenship to former slaves and specifically changed the rule in Article 1, Section 2 that slaves be counted only as three-fifths of a person for purposes of representation in Congress.

Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional.

With the words “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” the U.S. Supreme Court reversed more than a half century of legalized segregation. The landmark case was Brown v. Board of Education, in 1954.

What led to the outbreak of the bloodiest conflict in the history of North America? A common explanation is that the Civil War was fought over the moral issue of slavery. In fact, it was the economics of slavery and political control of that system that was central to the conflict. A key issue was states’ rights.

The Civil War in the United States began in 1861, after decades of simmering tensions between northern and southern states over slavery, states’ rights and westward expansion.

The Fourteenth Amendment, by its terms, lim-its discrimination only by governmental entities, not by private parties. As the Court has noted, “the action inhibited by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment is only such action as may fairly be said to be that of the States.

In the wake of the Civil War, three amendments were added to the U.S. Constitution.

The Huffington Post asked people there to explain why they were for or against same-sex marriage rights.

As Congress contended with President Andrew Johnson over the post–Civil War Reconstruction of the South, it created a Joint Committee on Reconstruction to consider legislation that would protect the “freedmen”.

From polygamy to same-sex marriage, here are 13 milestones in the history of marriage.

Congress established the Joint Committee on Reconstruction in December 1865. The body was tasked with studying the conditions in the post-Civil War South and recommending a congressional response.

In 1958, two residents of Virginia, Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in the District of Columbia. The Lovings returned to Virginia shortly thereafter. The couple was then charged with violating the state’s antimiscegenation statute, which banned inter-racial marriages. The Lovings were found guilty and sentenced to a year in jail (the trial judge agreed to suspend the sentence if the Lovings would leave Virginia and not return for 25 years).

Whether or not you favor marriage as a social institution, there’s no denying that it confers many rights, protections, and benefits–both legal and practical. Some of these vary from state to state, but this list provides what is typically included.

Groups of same-sex couples sued their relevant state agencies in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee to challenge the constitutionality of those states’ bans on same-sex marriage or refusal to recognize legal same-sex marriages that occurred in jurisdictions that provided for such marriages.

This book uses historical case studies to explore the rights in the Constitution. Supreme Court cases are used to demonstrate how a right received its modern interpretation, how the right applies today, and how courts and other interpreters seek to balance this right with important societal concerns such as public safety.

Perfecting the Declaration tells the story of how the American people, after the Civil War, re-wrote the Constitution to guarantee equality to all persons, bringing the Constitution back in line with the principle of equality laid out in the Declaration of Independence.

Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws for public facilities as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality – a doctrine that came to be known as “separate but equal”.

Several Republican candidates for president denounced the Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday that affirmed all Americans have the right to marry, regardless of the sex of their partner. Here are some of the candidates’ responses to the court’s ruling.

Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, is a landmark United States Supreme Court case dealing with sexual orientation and state laws. It was the first Supreme Court case to address gay rights since Bowers v. Hardwick, when the Court had held that laws criminalizing sodomy were constitutional.

Within 11 years, same-sex marriage rights spread from just one state to all 50 and Washington, DC. Here’s what led to the final decision by the Supreme Court.

Pro and con arguments on whether gay marriage should be legal.

Over a lifetime, unmarried women can pay as much as a million dollars more than their married counterparts for healthcare, taxes, and more.

It is often said that a theory of constitutional interpretation is not much of a theory if it cannot account for Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), the 60th anniversary of which we celebrate this year. Whether voiced by a judicial nominee, politician, law professor, or advocate, an argument that interprets the Equal Protection Clause as allowing official segregation is simply a nonstarter today. As momentous as that case was for starting the constitutional ball rolling toward full and equal citizenship for all Americans regardless of their race, Brown is now also a litmus test for what the Constitution, and especially the Equal Protection Clause, actually means.

The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. In Congress, it was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, and by the House on January 31, 1865. The amendment was ratified by the required number of states on December 6, 1865.

United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744, is a landmark United States Supreme Court civil rights case concerning same-sex marriage. The Court held that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, which denied federal recognition of same-sex marriages, was a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

The data are clear: you’ll live longer, stay saner, get richer, and be happier.