What is so important about the 14th Amendment How did it fundamentally Essay

What is so important about the 14th Amendment How did it fundamentally change the Constitution - Essay Example One point that shows the importance of the 14th amendment is the issues that it raised with regard to the issue of citizenship in the United States. The 14th amendment made this clause clear as it stated that it offers for the individual born in the United States citizenship. This means that as long as one was born in the United States, they had the right of an American and citizenship (Daniels). This was imperative in that it devolved the constitution to a point where it offers for the nationality and unity of all the people living in the United States. Prior to the formation of the 14th amendment, the United States had gone through many challenges and issues because there was an imbalance and lack of common ideology between the African Americans and the whites (Ames, 2009). However, when the 14th amendment got to play, it clearly got the issue to rest. This was a very important landmark to the African Americans as they began getting jobs without the fear of discrimination by the wh ites. Prior to the 14th amendment, African Americans living in the United States went through a lot of suffering. The whites always deemed them inferior and felt that they did not deserve effective lives in the United States. During those days, the African Americans lived poor lives and did not have a means of feeding their families. Quite opposite to this, the whites were very rich, owning huge areas of land. This much land was important for their agricultural lives. This made the whites require many workers to till their lands. The African Americas that did not have a source of income went to the whites in search of jobs and they were given opportunities though the treatments they received were rather poor. This went on further and turned to slavery. However, the 14th amendment outlined clearly that everybody born in the United States is equal to any other person born in the country and this is important

Pick a stance on the rights of animals based on Peter Singer's article Essay

Pick a stance on the rights of animals based on Peter Singer's article Famine - Essay Example The concept that we try to use to extract an argument for animal rights is the concept introduced by Singer that proximity does not matter. Whilst in this particular case, the proximity spoken of was geographic, .i.e., small child in neighbor’s house vis a vis a Bengali child, the proximity could also be in terms of species. In the logic of Peter Singer, animals cannot be denied rights given humans even if they are proximally different from the latter. Animal rights can find justification in theories of right that are embedded in time. It is interesting to begin this exposition by looking at the fairly recent debate between Singer and Judge Richard Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. At the heart of the debate was a statement made by Posner, that â€Å"human beings prefer their own. ... The statement that â€Å"human beings prefer their own† should in itself be subjected to critical scrutiny. Indeed, the phrase â€Å"preferring one’s own† denotes a value choice in favour of an entity or a construct that hews closely to how one perceives him or herself and possesses many of the same characteristics that he or she has. Indeed, the very same moral intuition that drives the argument of Posner is the same so-called moral intuition that has been the basis for the discrimination on the basis of gender (e.g., the discrimination against lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders), of race (e.g., the discrimination against blacks) and of religion (e.g., the discrimination against Islam.) History has amply demonstrated the folly of taking that statement, â€Å"human beings prefer their own†, as justified and benign. The moral equality theorists argue that there must be an equal consideration of the interests of human beings and animals. Peter Singer is perhaps one of the leading lights of animal ethics. He states the principle of moral equality as follows: The essence of the Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests is that we give equal weight in our moral deliberations to the like interests of all those affected by our actions.3 The main defense for this theory is that the properties that we ascribe to humans that distinguish them from animals are not properties  that all human beings have, and thus, the logic deployed by those who distinguish humans from animals as a means to justify unequal treatment of humans and animals may give rise to a case of discrimination. For example, not all human beings are capable of rational thought – an example would be infants. Some humans have dementia or schizophrenia. Does the argument then