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Civil Rights Legislation
2 articles on Civil Rights Legislation
Civil Rights Legislation
Source: The Oxford Companion to United States History
Word Count: 965America's first civil rights legislation came during Reconstruction. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments extended citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, granted all citizens equal protection of the laws, and outlawed the denial of citizens' rights on the basis of race. Empowered by these amendments, Congress passed a civil rights act in 1870 providing remedies against state officials who violated citizens' constitutional rights, and another in 1875 requiring equal treatment of all in places of public accommodation. The Supreme Court interpreted the 1870 act narrowly, however, and in the Civil Rights Cases (1883) held the 1875 act unconstitutional, ruling that Congress's power did not extend to cases of private discrimination.More than eighty years would pass before ...
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Source: The Oxford Companion to American Law
Word Count: 1675Civil rights legislation serves two important functions in the American legal system. First, it provides a remedy for the violation of constitutional rights by governmental officials. Second, it prohibits and provides remedies for certain kinds of discrimination committed by private entities and by the government.In the period following the Civil War, Congress enacted a number of laws designed to protect the civil rights of the newly emancipated African-American citizens. While some of these laws were later repealed by Congress or invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court, the two major laws of this period remain in effect today. The Civil Rights Act of 1871 (1983), which is perhaps the Nation’s most important civil rights law, provides relief against “persons acting under color of state law” for a claimed violation of federal ...
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