The Influence of Equal Protection Jurisprudence and the U.N. UDHR on U.S. Empire

• In Event: American Empire in the 20th Century: Transformations in Law and Representation

Abstract

This paper focuses on the influence of the Equal Protection Clause (EPC) of the 14th Amendment and the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) during debates about the extension of U.S. citizenship to American Samoa in the aftermath of WWII. U.S. lawmakers expressed their concerns to Samoan leaders that recent interpretations of the EPC by the Supreme Court and the creation of the UDHR meant that colonized populations living in the U.S. territories would not be able to protect their land from further white-settler colonialism. U.S. lawmakers argued that the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) and international law would no longer allow America Samoa to enforce race-based land ownership restrictions for non-Samoans. This legal history demonstrates how “color-blind” approaches to interpreting the U.S. Constitution and the UDHR have been used by policymakers to legitimize a global empire.

Author

• Ross Dardani, Muhlenberg College