14th Amendment: Ratified?

Factual Questions
1

This one is fairly straight forward. Some people that I have been involved in a heated debate with have claimed that since the 14th Amendment was never ratified, it does not exist.

While that would hold to be true. The Amendment must have been ratified to be included in the Constitution. I’ve done some of my own research (quick Google searches) and have found that there is indeed evidence to support that the 14th Amendment was ratified.

Basically, was the 14th Amendment ratified? By which states, and when?

2

From here: http://www.nps.gov/malu/documents/amend14.htm

3

Going by the count and the dates, it would appear that rescissions by state legislatures are (or were) not recognized by the Secretary of State. The necessary total did get reached, but if you allow rescissions, not until about a year after the official adoption.

4

My next question is does Ohio rescinding its ratification, void the process? Or does it have no effect?

5

Hasn’t the law moved well past any argument as to the legitimacy of the 14th amendment? I mean important court decisions are based on it and subsequent practice’s and law’s relying on those decisions have long since rendered moot any discussion of the legitimacy of the amendment.

6

Make that “practices” and “laws.” As I’ve been forced to say before, English really is my native language. Honest.

7

Yes, this is exactly correct, but there are huge numbers of tax avoiders and various other kooks in our country who operate under the delusion that if they can somehow find a loophole in the correct procedure for the passage of a bill or amendment not only will it become immediately invalidated but all subsequent laws that refer to it are equally void.

It doesn’t matter that no court will agree to this, because the courts are part of the conspiracy.

This wonderful site, the TAX PROTESTER FAQ refers to dozens of arguments like these.

There have been various instances of legislatures first ratifying an amendment and then later rescinding that ratification. As far as I am aware, none of these have ever been declared to be valid by any final higher court decision.

This probably would have become a major battle had a 36th state ratified the Equal Rights Amendment in the allotted time.

http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/era.htm

That would have been an epic battle and probably would have settled the question for all time. But it didn’t happen and the earlier examples are just murky enough to allow some to continue the argument.