MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Howard University - the historically Black school here - opens a center today dedicated to the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment was added to the Constitution after the Civil War. It establishes that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are American citizens, entitled to equal protection and due process under the law. Sherrilyn Ifill will lead the center. She holds the Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Esquire chair in civil rights at Howard's Law School and is the former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. I started our conversation by asking her to describe the goal of the program.
SHERRILYN IFILL: We are, after all, at a law school and try to be supportive of litigation brought by others, but we will not be bringing litigation ourselves. But it is really more of a space for researcher scholarships, for curriculum development and for convening people together across disciplines to talk about the values of the 14th Amendment and to think through how to infuse those values into the various institutions of American life and into our educational institutions, most of all.
MARTIN: One of the reasons people who aren't lawyers might recognize the 14th Amendment is that it establishes birthright citizenship.
IFILL: Yes.
MARTIN: And one of the executive orders that President Trump signed on his first day in office was an attempt to nullify it. But is part of the purpose of the center to weigh in on this discussion in some way since this has been surfaced in this new era?
IFILL: Yeah, it's very important. And in fact, you know, the 14th Amendment touches the life of every single person in this country, and they don't realize it. And birthright citizenship is just one of those ways. Birthright citizenship was created to overturn the Dred Scott decision, in which the Supreme Court had said that Black people - whether they were enslaved or free - could not be citizens of this country. And so, obviously, Black people are incredibly affected by birthright citizenship as well. But if you think about the waves of immigrants that have come from across the world to the United States with the understanding and the knowledge that they could become naturalized citizens, that their children, if born the day after they arrived in this country, will be citizens of this country. It gives you a sense of the reach and touch of the 14th Amendment.
MARTIN: What is your hope for the work of the center and how it will touch people who are not going to go to Howard Law School?
IFILL: There are people all over this country who will proudly and passionately tell you about their Second Amendment rights. But when was the last time you heard somebody, an ordinary American, tell you about their 14th Amendment rights, even though those are the rights that guarantee equality in this country, that ensure that the state cannot take things from you without providing you with some due process, and that guarantee birthright citizenship? And the point of the center is to create the curriculum, both formal and informal and the kind of narrative that Americans can get their hands around so that they will come to cloak their conception of these rights that we take for granted in constitutional terms.
MARTIN: Before we let you go, the other thing that the 14th Amendment stipulates is that no one who's engaged in insurrection can hold high office in the United States. And I do wonder whether any of your scholarly work will be addressing that point, that part of the amendment.
IFILL: Well, indeed. And, of course, the Supreme Court issued a decision last year. We did file an amicus brief in that case last year, Trump v. Anderson. There are other provisions of the 14th Amendment that I want to explore as part of the work of this center. It is the longest amendment to the Constitution. So the part you read at the very beginning is the part that all law students learn. But even most law students didn't learn about Section 3, the insurrection clause. And most law students don't learn about Section 2, which purports to reduce the representation of states that engage in voter suppression. And so it really is a sleeping giant. And part of the purpose of this center is to fully familiarize Americans with the richness of this important Constitutional amendment. And that would include all of its provisions that I think are quite relevant for the challenges that we face today.
MARTIN: That's Sherrilyn Ifill. She's a professor at Howard University's law school. Professor Ifill, thank you so much for talking with us once again.
IFILL: Thank you, Michel. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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