The Second Founding

An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment

By: Ilan Wurman

Narrated by: Ilan Wurman

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 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.

©2020 Ilan Wurman (P)2020 Ilan Wurman

Easy to Understand and Highly Instructive

Conveniently broken up into distinct, easy-to-understand topics, and then succinctly combined into a cohesive whole in the final few chapters, this short book is an awesome introduction to a modern Originalist view of the 14th Amendment. Professor Wurman is an incredible Originalist thinker, providing a common-sense framework to constitutional interpretation that both properly constrains the judiciary to the original meaning of our country's founding documents, and allows the necessary flexibility to handle the modern world.

Highly recommended.

Erudite but wrong

Another neo-fascist tries to tear out American jurisprudence root and branch to justify a new confederacy.