The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment
Cambridge University Press, 2020

Summary: 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 the 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.

Praise: “The clearest, most straightforward book explaining our Constitution’s promises of equal citizenship, the rule of law, and protection from violence.” —Christopher R. Green, University of Mississippi School of Law and author of Equal Citizenship, Civil Rights, and the Constitution

“This timely book shows how the country ended slavery and embraced a new constitutional vision of equality in the wake of the Civil War.” —Michael W. McConnell, Stanford Law School