The Introduction outlines the argument of the book and its methodology, distinguishing the more reliable "language of the law" originalism fromless reliable versions that rely too much on legislative history or antislavery constitutional thinkers. Using this methodology, the book will show that the key provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment's first section had well-established antebellum legal meanings that chart a satisfactory middle course between interpretations that rely on what people thought in 1868 and those that allow judges to pour into the text their own extratextual values.