Perez on The 14th Amendment From Homer Plessy to Kilmar Abrego Garcia: Citizenship and Due Press in America's Constitutional Evolution

Lynette Perez, City of Little Rock, has published The 14th Amendment From Homer Plessy To Kilmar Abrego Garcia: Citizenship And Due Process In America’s Constitutional Evolution at 59 Creighton Law Review 281 (2026). Here is the abstract.

This Article examines the constitutional evolution of 14th Amendment citizenship and due process protections through the historical lens spanning from Plessy v. Ferguson to the contemporary case of Noem v. Abrego Garcia. While separated by more than a century, these cases illuminate persistent tensions between individual constitutional rights and executive power, revealing how citizenship status and due process protections remain contested terrain in American constitutional law. This Article argues the modern challenges to citizenship and due process rights echo the same fundamental questions that plagued the Reconstruction Era: Who deserves constitutional protections, and what limits exist on government power to deny such protections? By tracing this constitutional arc, this Article demonstrates that contemporary immigration and citizenship disputes represent not aberrations but continuations of America’s ongoing struggle to fulfill the 14th Amendment’s egalitarian promise.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.