States&#39; rights and the 14th amendment The 14th amendment guarantees equal protection under the law for all citizens of the US. It's my understanding that this means from the Federal Government, and doesn't exactly apply when it's a &quot;states' rights&quot; kind of issue. My #1 question then is, what if something is illegal in all 50 states and US territories at the state level? Is that not a de facto Federal Law that all citizen's should have the equal protection of, even if they reside outside of the United States? I don't want to dish too much dirt, but the specifics are I'm a US citizen, full time resident of Peru. I have a son who is a US/Peruvian dual citizen, and an estranged Peruvian wife. She has been abusing him mentally, physically, and possibly sexually, and I have ABSOLUTELY 0 LEGAL STANDING HERE TO DO ANYTHING. To make matters worse, the National Police here have been unwittingly helping her continue her abuse and continue the whole fraud that predicated our marriage and his birth etc. So, basically I'm now having to literally watch my back now that they know I've got them on the hook.
The 14th amendment guarantees equal protection under the law for all citizens of the US. It's my understanding that this means from the Federal Government, and doesn't exactly apply when it's a &quot;states' rights&quot; kind of issue. Your understanding is incorrect. The primary original purpose of the 14th amendment was to prevent states from passing laws that treated former slaves differently from other citizens, and indeed to clearly declare that they were in fact citizens, thus reversing the decision in Dred Scot v Sandford 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857). That decision held that black people could not be US citizens and had no rights granted to citizens under the US Federal Constitution. Of course the amendment is applied in a much wider scope than merely granting citizenship to the former slaves freed by the 13th amendment. The Equal Protection Clause** generally requires that laws not make arbitrary and unjustified distinctions between people, nor treat different people in the same legal situation differently. The clause does not, however, prevent laws from treating who are in some significant legal sense in different positions differently. What is and is not a violation of the clause has been the subject of many legal cases and much debate. The clause requires &quot;state action&quot; to be invoked. and is generally only applies to state and local governments, and those in their employ or acting on their behalf. However, the US Supreme Court held in Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497 (1954) that the 5th amendment imposes a similar requirement of equal protection on the Federal government. The amendment, and the equal protection clause, do not guarantee any particular outcome in judicial cases. It is not clear from the question what equal protection issue, if any, might be at issue in the particular matter described. If the issue is one of treatment under the laws of a country other than the US, even though the people involved are US citizens, the US constitution, including the amendment will not apply.
@DaleM isn't wrong, but some elaboration is in order. You (almost always) gain your citizenship (or nationality) in the first instance, at birth, without the agreement or assent of you or your parents. It is thrust upon you. Usually, your country of citizenship must consent to end your citizenship (or authorize you to do so unilaterally) under that country's laws. Once you have citizenship or nationality, in practice, in most countries, you can generally only renounce your citizenship if you contemporaneously or already have a citizenship somewhere else. You are at a minimum strongly dissuaded from doing so and are not a sympathetic candidate for relief under laws related to statelessness if you willfully put yourself in this position knowing the consequences. This is a feature of the citizenship laws of most countries in order to implement international treaties designed to prevent statelessness which are widely adopted. When an adult is naturalized as a citizen of a new country, usually, their old citizenship is revoked by operation of law under the laws of their old country. In many countries, including the U.S., there are high fees and tax consequences for renouncing your citizenship. Any potential tax liabilities in the future that were not yet due under U.S. law (e.g. capital gains taxes an appreciated assets not yet sold, and estate taxes that would be due if the person renouncing their citizenship had died on that date) are owed immediately upon applying to renounce your citizenship. A stateless person is, subject to quite narrow exceptions, still subject to all of the laws of the place where they are located, including almost all of its criminal laws (except treason) and its tax laws (at least on income earned in that country). A stateless person lacks many rights. They can't travel internationally (there are exceptions under treaty in some cases, but obtaining those rights is cumbersome at a minimum). They can't vote. They typically aren't entitled to domestic welfare state benefits like national health insurance, disability payments, unemployment benefits, subsidized housing, old age or retirement benefits, etc. They can't work in a licensed or regulated profession. They may not even be able to sign a lease. They may not be allowed to own a company or serve as an officer or director of a company or as a trustee of a trust. They aren't entitled to diplomatic assistance. There are many fraudulent legal movements such as the &quot;sovereign citizen movement&quot; (and the Moorish Sovereign Citizens) that assert that citizenship is voluntary and that just by disavowing it in some official feeling way, they can be exempt from taxes, court jurisdiction, and/or other laws. This is false and people who act on this fraudulent misinformation often suffer serious legal consequences as a result.
It isn't a double negative, although it is a bit of an usual phrasing. The context that you are overlooking is that the United States Constitution does not say who is or is not allowed to vote because that authority is not vested in the federal government. There is no affirmative right to vote in the United States Constitution, there is merely a right not to be denied the right to vote for certain particular reasons. Responsibility for determining who is allowed to vote is vested in state governments. The right to vote for the House of Representatives is derivative of that decision pursuant to Article I, Section 2, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution which states: The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature. The 19th Amendment prohibits state's from denying the right to vote on account of sex, but does not prohibit states from denying the right to vote on account of other grounds not specified in the 19th Amendment, such as property ownership, education, criminal record, possession of identification, etc. When the 19th Amendment was ratified, in 1920, some states (e.g. Colorado) already allowed women to vote, while others did not. Similarly, when the 15th Amendment was ratified some states prevented people from voting based upon race and others did not. And, so on. In practice, the modern trend is for states to enact laws allowing all U.S. citizens age eighteen or over to vote, subject primarily to limitations that vary quite a bit based upon criminal record or incarceration status. But, historically, when the power to set the franchise was vested in the states, race, gender, property ownership, age (in excess of eighteen), poll tax payments, and "civics" tests, have all been used at sometime or another to limit the right to vote. There is, however, some incentive for states not to be restrictive, because certain kinds of restrictions reduce the population of the state under the U.S. Constitution for purposes of allocated members of Congress and electoral votes. This is set forth in Section 2 of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution (ratified in 1868) which states: Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State. (Incidentally, there are no longer any people who qualify as "Indians not taxed" in the U.S. due to federal legislation that was adopted after 1868.) This set a presumptive baseline that males twenty-one years of age not disqualified by a criminal record are allowed to vote, but with a penalty for not doing so imposed at the state level in apportionment rather than in the form of a prohibition against doing so, before express prohibitions against certain kinds of restrictions of the franchise were adopted in the 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th Amendments. It is also useful to compare the examples of the 15th Amendment (ratified 1870), the 24th Amendment (ratified 1964) and the 26th Amendment (ratified 1971), which are parallel to the 19th Amendment and wouldn't make sense against a backdrop that the population, by default, is allowed to vote. Article XV (Amendment 15 - Rights of Citizens to Vote) The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. and Amendment XXIV (Amendment 24 - Abolition of the Poll Tax Qualification in Federal Elections) The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. and Amendment XXVI (Amendment 26 - Reduction of Voting Age Qualification) 1: The right of citizens of the United States, who are 18 years of age or older, to vote, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of age. affects 15 2: The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Currently there is nowhere in the USA where polygamy is legal. So regardless of their sexual or gender expression or orientation, being married to MORE THAN ONE person at the same time is illegal. If, however, it turned out that someone had more than one spouse at their death, I'm sure that property distribution would be a matter for the probate court to sort out. As far as legally-married &quot;trans spouses&quot;, for lack of a better term, I don't see why that would that impact inheritance in any way?
While the point made by user6726 is not wrong with respect to this particular statute, it doesn't address a more basic point about how the supremacy clause works. Federal criminal laws govern punishments for federal crimes in the federal criminal justice system. Federal prosecutors bringing federal criminal charges against criminal defendants in the federal criminal justice system can and do secure death penalty sentences against criminal defendants in states where there is no state death penalty. One recent case where that happened was the Boston Marathon bombing case where a defendant was sentenced to death in federal court for the crime for violation of a federal criminal statute, despite the fact that Massachusetts has no death penalty of its own. This is not a supremacy clause issue. No state law had to be changed or invalidated because of the existence of the federal law. States law governs how the state criminal justice system works, not the federal criminal justice system. When we say that a state has abolished the death penalty, we mean that it has abolished it in the state criminal justice system. This doesn't absolutely foreclose the possibility that the death penalty will be imposed in that state on federal charges, although it does make it far less likely that the death penalty will be imposed. Partially, this is because "blue collar" crime is handled by the states. Partially, this is because out of comity and a concern that juries in states without a death penalty are less likely to vote for a capital sentence, federal prosecutors are less likely to seek the death penalty in a state without capital punishment than in a state with capital punishment. For example, there are 2,902 people on death row as of 2016, in the U.S. Almost 98% of death penalty convictions that have not yet been carried out were obtained in state courts. Only, 62 involve civilian death penalties imposed in federal courts (mostly in states that have the death penalty) and another 6 involve death penalties imposed in military courts (mostly in states that allow the death penalty or abroad). All of the other cases arose in state courts.
It is probably illegal in all of the jurisdictions in the US where a fetus is legally declared to be a person and where the murder statutes are written to not explicitly exclude abortion: that is, in no jurisdictions. No law existing or proposed for Georgia specifically addresses "travel for the purpose of getting an abortion". The underlying theory behind the claim (advocated by some Georgia attorneys) is that a person may be open to a conspiracy charge for taking a woman to another state to get an abortion, which would be a crime if committed in Georgia. If a conspiracy exists in Georgia to do something illegal (in Georgia), that is a violation of OCGA 16-4-8 ("when he together with one or more persons conspires to commit any crime and any one or more of such persons does any overt act to effect the object of the conspiracy"). The substantially same law exists in Washington, and most if not all other states. The theory is apparently that "conspire to commit a crime" means something like "conspire to perform an act which would be a crime if performed in in this jurisdiction", e.g. "purchase marijuana, or take a job at certain payday loan companies". No state has successfully claimed extraterritorial jurisdiction, where a Georgia resident can be prosecuted in Georgia for a legal act carried out in another state, so this theory is a bit of a stretch.
The details depend on the state, of course. The common law thing you are looking for is a writ of mandamus -- a court order to a public official to do something (or not do something) that they are required to do under the law. Writs of mandamus were traditionally only applicable to ministerial tasks (i.e. things that are basically paper-shuffling where there is little to no discretion); marriage licenses are typically considered ministerial. With discretionary actions, things are much more complicated because the government official is supposed to have significant ability to decide what should and shouldn't be allowed; mandamus doesn't apply unless there's a right to the action requested. In some cases, mandamus has been replaced with other forms of judicial review, but in Alabama it is definitely still mandamus that's involved (source: mandamus is what's previously been used to stop issuance of licenses). For federal review, which is more likely to get somewhere, the approach to use is the exact same thing that led to DeBoer (the case bundled into Obergefell that was about granting licenses), and Perry, and many of the other gay marriage cases: a lawsuit seeking an injunction or declaratory relief under 42 USC 1983, which allows actions in law and equity whenever anyone denies civil rights to a US citizen (or someone in the jurisdiction of the US) under color of law. The ultimate result of this kind of suit is a federal court order to issue a marriage license, or a declaration that it's illegal to not issue the license (and so anyone who doesn't will be subject to a court order). Violating this order, like any court order, is contempt of court.
The US has jurisdiction because you committed a crime in the US. Canada has jurisdiction because you committed a crime in Canada. As added complications, if you are a Mexican citizen then Mexico has jurisdiction and if your victim is Chinese then China has jurisdiction. If you get arrested on an Interpol warrant in Spain then Spain has jurisdiction. And so on ... Your implicit assumption is that jurisdiction is exclusive, it isn't. Any country (or sub-national jurisdiction) that claims jurisdiction has jurisdiction, at least to the extent of testing that claim. Whether any given polity has jurisdiction depends on the particular law involved, some laws are only applicable within that countries borders others are extra-territorial, some are applicable to citizens but not non-citizens or vice-versa, etc.