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Dred Scott v. Sanford
Dred Scott held as a slave sued his former master's estate under the state-citizenship diversity jurisdiction of the federal courts seeking he become free because his master had voluntarily taken him into free territory -
Civil Rights Act
declared all persons born in the U.S. were citizens of the U.S. and the state in which they lived ,thereby affirming a rule of Citizen by birth. ( exceptions were American-born persons "subject to any foreign power" and for "Indians not taxed") -
The Fourteenth Amendment
Born in the America under the American flag, you're a citizen regardless of male, female, black or white, gay or straight. -
The Citizenship Clause
allowed states to set their own ground rules with many states reserving state citizenship for whites and making African Americans (even those born on state's soil)-mere "inhabitants"
Also strike against both Black Codes and Dred Scott -
Equal-Birth Principle
Government regulates its citizens in numerous ways using sorts of legal distinctions. Ex: between wage earners and dividend earners in the tax code, or between opticians and ophthalmologists in medical regulations. -
Black Codes
Ex-Confederate states enacted after the Civil War, eradicate-degraded African Americans because they were born with dark skin, reducing them to second-class citizens. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
reading that the Citizenship Clause as guaranteeing that all citizens are equal before the law.