The main intent was to provide a check on federal govt.
Anything to do with the states was left to the states and the people.
And as you point out later, laws were later added to CLARIFY and make more STATUTORY
The spirit of the law applying both to States and to Public Institutions.
So the 14th Amendment made it more specific that the same rights of the people
were not to be discriminated against within any state or "denied equal protection of the laws."
And the Civil Rights Act made this more specific that public institutions were not to discriminate either.
The problem is no matter what we put in writing,
if people run around denying each other due process, and equal inclusion in the democratic process
by bullying by coercion or exclusion, that's a problem with how people enforce these standards ourselves!
We'd have to change our behavior if we are going to uphold higher standards across the board.
We can have all these wonderful laws that speak to
* equal protection of the laws
* equal justice under law
But if we treat each other as unequal, don't respect our rights equally as others,
we defeat our own standards of equal justice and then wonder why politicians and govt can't do any better!
