“That the Work This Time Shall Finally Be Done” Explored 14th Amendment’s Role in Next Refounding

The 14th Amendment Center for Law and Democracy held its second annual symposium on April 10 — featuring scholars, artists, advocates, and students who gathered for a day of conversation and calls to action around the meaning of citizenship, equality, and democratic renewal during this perilous constitutional moment.

“That the Work This Time Shall Finally Be Done: The 14th Amendment and the Next Refounding” was hosted by the Center’s founding director, Sherrilyn Ifill, who framed the day-long convening as an opportunity to reclaim the narrative about the 14th Amendment and the urgent need to push for a new Reconstruction.

“I don’t think it makes sense for us to come together and pretend that we are not in a moment of profound crisis,” Ifill, the Vernon Jordan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Civil Rights, told the audience at Howard University School of Law. She added that she chose the name of the symposium “to encourage us to intentionally imagine the work we’ll need to do to complete the creation of an infrastructure that will support multiracial, healthy democracy in this country.”

The gathering, which kicked off with a session on the current attacks on birthright citizenship, now pending before the Supreme Court, also explored the landscape for voting rights and how the post-Civil War amendments are being weaponized to shut out Black people and other historically marginalized groups from the political process.

“Every component of the 14th Amendment is under attack today, beginning with the very first sentence,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, also the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee. He added: “Birthright citizenship, due process, equal protection – all of it is under attack in this period.” That session also included remarks from the Legal Defense Fund’s Janai Nelson, who argued Louisiana v. Callais before the Supreme Court, as well as from Wilfred Codrington III, a legal scholar from Cardozo who specializes in elections and the law of democracy.

Later sessions explored alternative forms of equality in constitution-making, centering the experiences of Haitians and South Africans; how sustaining artists and their artistry is crucial for advancing visions of justice and a better, different world; and the urgent need to win the narrative war through truth-telling, preserving history, public education, and litigation that fights distortions with the facts about how things truly are.

Throughout the day’s program, law students in Prof. Ifill’s 14th Amendment seminar engaged the audience on their work supporting an amicus brief to the Supreme Court to defend birthright citizenship, as well as research on Section 2 of the amendment, which provides for remedial measures Congress could take in the event of Black voter disenfranchisement.

Full recordings of all the sessions are now posted on the 14th Amendment Center’s YouTube channel and will be available as a resource on our site in the coming days.

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The slate of participants in the symposium included:

• Madiba Dennie, Deputy Editor and Senior Contributor, Balls and Strikes
• Mark Joseph Stern,  Senior Writer, Slate
• Nana Gyamfi, Executive Director, Black Alliance for Just Immigration
• Janai Nelson, President and Director-Counsel, Legal Defense Fund
• Wilfred U. Codrington III, Walter Floersheimer Professor of Constitutional Law and co-director of the Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy at Cardozo School of Law
• Jamie Raskin, U.S. Congressman, Ranking Member of the House Committee on the Judiciary and Professor of Law Emeritus at American University Washington College of Law
• Sade Lythcott Chief Executive Officer, National Black Theatre
• Anna Glass, Executive Director, Dance Theater of Harlem
• Dr. Sarah Lewis, Founder, Vision & Justice and the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities and Associate Professor of African and African-American, Harvard University
• Dr. Nathalie Frédéric Pierre, Assistant Professor of History, Howard University
• Governor Deval Patrick, Senior Partner, The Vistria Group
• Camoghne Felix, Poet, Scholar, and Organizer
• Yolanda Wisher, Senior Curator, Monuments Lab
• Tiffany Brewer, Assistant Professor of Law at Howard University School of Law
• Dr. Benjamin Talton, Executive Director of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center and Professor in the Department of History at Howard University
• Deborah Menkhart, Co-Director, Zinn Education Project

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For a roundup of the Center’s launch and inaugural symposium, held in March 2025, including videos of all the panels, click here.