Paper's abstract

Elisabeth Zoller, Equal Protection Clause in the United States
The Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment embodies the American approach to equality. It calls for an equality of opportunity that is to say, a prohibition of all discriminations not an equality of results. Its history is not severable from slavery and race. Two periods must be distinguished in the evolution of the clause : before and after Brown v. Board of Education (1954). The ambition of this landmark decision was to do away with the practice of racial classifications considered as incompatible with true citizenship. The great ideal of the opinion by Warren unfortunately did not take hold. An obsessive concern for racial classification in particular, the concept of « suspect class » has in the long run impoverished the effectiveness of judicial review over other inequalities.


Key Words : USA equal protection clause, 14th amendment
t. 51, 2008 : p. 207-222