Previous to 1868, when the Amendment became part of the Constitution, comparatively little state legislation relating to private property had been reviewed by the Court. Ever since the establishment of the federal government, cases involving the constitutionality of state legislation had been appealed to United States Courts when they had been objected to as running counter to the clauses of the Constitution forbidding states to enact bills of attainder, _ex post facto_ laws, or laws impairing the obligation of contracts. Their number, however, had been relatively small, and normally the acts of state legislatures had not been reviewed by federal courts; or in other words the tendency had been to preserve the individuality and strength of the several states. After the war, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments placed additional prohibitions on the states, and the decisions of the Supreme Court determined the meaning and extent of the added provisions. The interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment was especially important. Most significant was the interpretation of Section 1, which reads as follows: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. So vague and inclusive were these phrases that many important questions immediately sprang from them. What were the privileges and immunities of the citizen? Did those of the citizen of the United States differ from those of the citizen of a state? Was a corporation a person? What was liberty? What was due process of law? Hitherto the protection of life, liberty and property had rested, in the main, upon the individual states, and cases involving these subjects had been decided by state courts. Were the state courts to be superseded, in relation to these vital subjects, by the United States Supreme Court?