The Supreme Court's 1954 conclusion to "reverse incorporate" the Equal Protection Clause into the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment is a classic event of something that makes practical feel precisely rests on an elusive theoretical ground. Bolling v. Sharpe held that racial segregation inwards the populace schools of the District of Columbia was unconstitutional. Given, though, that the Equal Protection Clause applies to alone the states, how could federal schoolhouse segregation violate that provision?
The Supreme Court replied that "the concepts of equal protection in addition to due process, both stemming from our American thought of fairness, are non mutually exclusive." The consider added: "Segregation inwards populace pedagogy is non reasonably related to whatever proper governmental objective in addition to hence it imposes on Negro children of the District of Columbia a burden that constitutes an arbitrary deprivation of their freedom inwards violation of the [Fifth Amendment] Due Process Clause." And since "the Constitution prohibits the states from maintaining racially segregated populace schools, it would endure unthinkable that the same Constitution would impose a lesser duty on the Federal Government."
In writing my book on the Bill of Rights, I've come upwardly to believe that 1 agency to empathize Bolling is equally the Supreme Court's annunciation that the Equal Protection Clause is role of the Bill of Rights. Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 to a greater extent than precise agency of proverb that would endure to define the Bill of Rights equally the start 10 amendments summation the Fourteenth Amendment (or, perhaps, Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment). This Definition makes feel given that incorporation was accomplished through the Fourteenth Amendment, in addition to the drafter of the Equal Protection Clause was ahead of his fourth dimension inwards describing the start 8 amendments equally the Bill of Rights. Legal change, though, often happens indirectly or through what a twain actor powerfulness telephone call upwardly a finesse. Here the twist is that the Supreme Court proclaimed (after the Bill of Rights was established firmly inwards the national imagination) that the Equal Protection Clause was actually inwards the fifth Amendment equally was role of the Bill of Rights all along.
I confined this signal to a footnote inwards the book, precisely may explore the implications farther someday.
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