Enforcing the equal protection clause: congressional power, judicial doctrine, and constitutional law

Abstract

For over a century, Congress's power to Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of the equal protection of laws has presented judges and scholars with a puzzle. What does it mean for Congress to enforce such a wide-ranging, open-ended provision when Supreme Court has insisted on its own superiority in interpreting Fourteenth Amendment? In Enforcing Equal Protection Clause, William D. Araiza offers a unique understanding of Congress's enforcement power and its relationship to Court's claim to supremacy when interpreting Constitution. Drawing on history of American thinking about equality in decades before and after Civil War, Araiza argues that congressional enforcement and judicial supremacy can co-exist, but only if Court limits its role to ensuring that enforcement legislation reasonably promotes core meaning of Equal Protection Clause. Much of Court's equal protection jurisprudence stops short of stating such core meaning, thus leaving Congress free (subject to appropriate judicial checks) to full scope of constitutional guarantee. Araiza's thesis reconciles Supreme Court's ultimate role in interpreting Constitution with Congress's superior capacity to transform Fourteenth Amendment's majestic principles into living reality. The Fourteenth Amendment's Enforcement Clause raises difficult issues of separation of powers, federalism, and constitutional rights. Araiza illuminates each of these in this scholarly, timely work that is both intellectually rigorous but also accessible to non-specialist readers.