On July 9, 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was officially ratified after South Carolina and Louisiana provided the final necessary votes. Section one of the historic amendment established broad definitions of national citizenship, decreeing that all persons born or naturalized in the country were citizens. It strictly prohibited states from denying any person life, liberty, or property without due process of law, and guaranteed equal protection under the law to everyone within American jurisdiction.
While the amendment was drafted primarily to secure the legal rights of newly freed slaves after the Civil War, clever lawyers soon found an unintended application for its language. In the late nineteenth century, corporate attorneys argued that corporations should be legally viewed as persons under the law. The Supreme Court accepted this interpretation, and for several decades, the Fourteenth Amendment was used far more frequently to strike down government regulations on corporations than to protect civil rights.
