Equal protection under the law

SIGNIFICANCE: The idea of equal treatment under the law is an expectation that most citizens have of the American justice system. However, the justice system has not always achieved that ideal.

The idea of equality under the law is symbolized in courthouses throughout the United States in various artistic depictions of the Roman goddess Justitia depicting the blindfolded deity weighing the considerations of justice on her scales without prejudice or favoritism. However, despite significant progress toward equality, the United States has often fallen short of this ideal, both in the quality of protection provided to citizens and in the treatment of those who stand accused.

The equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution forbids state governments from denying their citizens equal protection under the law or imposing unequal punishments against them. Ratified in 1868, shortly after the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment was designed in large part to protect recently freed slaves. In actual practice, however, African American citizens were frequently denied equal protection under the law and many were victims of brutal lynch mobs, whose White citizens were rarely brought to justice by state or federal courts. At the same time, African Americans accused of crimes—especially rape—against White people were swiftly convicted in the courts by all-White juries and given severe punishments, including the death penalty. Members of other minority groups have also frequently found the courts to be particularly harsh in their treatment of non-White defendants and unconcerned with the crimes committed against them.

Women, too, have not always enjoyed equality under the law. Historically, women sometimes received lenient treatments from “chivalrous” police or judges. However, research has also shown that many women perceived as “unfeminine” or as living “wanton” lifestyles were severely punished by sexist court officials who sought to use the justice system to enforce what they regarded as appropriate gender roles. Furthermore, women victims have not always been adequately protected from rape and domestic violence, which many officials in the justice system long regarded as personal issues outside the scope of the law.

Since the last decades of the twentieth century, excellent progress has been made toward achieving something like true equal protection under the law. Federal enforcement of civil rights legislation for minorities, increased participation of women and members of minority groups on juries, improvements in such due process rights as the right to counsel, and the inclusion of women and minorities in the various components of the justice system have all been important strides toward greater equality under the law.

Nevertheless, there remains much room for improvement before the American justice system can be said to have achieved its ideal of equality under the law. Evidence of continued disadvantages to minorities in the application of the death penalty, controversial law-enforcement practices such as racial profiling of narcotics suspects, inadequate representation for poor defendants, and the persistent inability of the justice system to control crimes against women and in disadvantaged neighborhoods continue to vex a justice system premised on the principle of equality. Racial profiling and inequalities in the justice system have come to the forefront of media coverage and have been pinpointed since 2014, when eighteen-year-old, unarmed, Black man Michael Brown was shot down by White police officer Darren Wilson. The event sparked significant protest and spurred the Black Lives Matter movement. Since that event, there have been a number of high profile cases of brutality against unarmed Black men and women at the hands of White police officers. In many of those cases, the officers were acquitted. Such events highlight how far the American justice system still needs to go to fully achieve equal protection under the law.

Strides have been made for the equal representation of other minority groups with the striking down of the Defense of Marriage Act and the Supreme Court ruling in 2015 that prohibiting marriage for same-sex couples is unconstitutional. Since then, same sex couples cannot be denied the full legal benefits of marriage that heterosexual couples have always had.

Bibliography

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