The Continuing Challenge of the Fourteenth Amendment

I HAVE come here to Athens tonight to help you commemorate a great event of the past. This year marks the centennial of an occurrence which has had, and will continue to have, great impact on the people in this room. It was in 1868, on July 28 to be exact, that Secretary of State Seward certified that the fourteenth amendment had been ratified by three-quarters of the states and had become part of the Constitution. This event is not simply an isolated historical landmark for the students of this school.

Historically, the ratification of the Civil War Amendments marked the culmination of a revolution. These amendments decreed the end of slavery and enshrined into national law the principles of freedom and equality which an earlier generation had announced in more abstract form in the Declaration of Independence. They were the legal embodiment of the Judeo-Christian Ethic, of deeply felt principles of justice. But the ratification of the fourteenth amendment, the event we commemorate tonight, also marked the beginning of another revolution, one in which this law school and especially its students must play a vital role.

This revolution has continued only fitfully over the last century. Yet its goals are precisely the same as those which under- lie the fourteenth amendment. The ideals of fairness, justice, and equality which prompted the adoption of that amendment stand now as yet unfulfilled promises to new generations of men.