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Privileges, Immunities, and Substantive Due Process
Abstract
In McDonald v. Chicago, the Supreme Court is being asked to reconsider its disastrous 1873 decision in The Slaughter-House Cases. This article seeks to discuss Slaughter-House in a broader context, to address two questions. First, what is the fundamental reason that Slaughter-House was wrongly decided? Although the decision has many flaws, I contend that the deepest reason, and the one that accounts for the case’s other errors, involves important abstract principles of federalism and sovereignty; in particular, the Slaughter-House Court failed to give effect to the principle of "paramount national citizenship" that was a component of Republican Party ideology and the most fundamental. Second, is it true, as some scholars and judges contend, that overruling Slaughter-House and restoring vitality to the privileges or immunities clause would warrant abandoning the theory of "substantive due process"? If so, then the McDonald decision could herald an even more far-reaching revolution of law than it would at first appear. But in fact, "substantive due process" is not a mere substitute for the lost privileges or immunities clause, and overruling Slaughter-House should not coincide with an abandonment of theat theory. Rather, both doctrines are independent, constitutionally valid sources of protection against excessive state power.
... According to Sandefur (2010), ...
This is an analysis of the levels of extremism, future trends and threats, political extremism groups in the United States, disenfranchisement as a variable, the radicalization process and the role of religion, and 21 st century technology used to promote extremism. Issues that plague any analysis of extremism include lack of a uniformed definition, alleged inability to infiltrate small groups and organization, and some types of extremism law enforcement deems unimportant.
A reason is “constructed” if it does not appeal to a natural or normative authority that stands apart from human action, but is instead created by contingent social forces. The idea of constructed reason coexists uneasily with the rule of law. A bedrock rule-of-law principle requires that government action be nonarbitrary or reasoned, “reason unaffected by desire,” as Aristotle said. Yet, if the reasons judges invoke to justify judicial decisions are part of variable social and historical contexts in which the judges themselves are embedded, how can judicial decisions uphold the rule-of-law requirement of reasoned decision making untainted by the decision maker’s desires?
This essay gives a philosophical account of the social construction of legal reasons, relying on Kant, Heidegger, and Gadamer as the decisive figures. It applies this account to current U.S. controversies over same-sex marriage, and suggests how constructed reasons might coexist with still-powerful rule-of-law myths.
In its 1999 case, Saenz v. Roe, the Supreme Court re-invigorated a long-dead clause of the Constitution, the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the 14th Amendment. Oddly, though, the opinion was written by Justice Stevens, one of the staunchest devotees of a living Constitution rather than originalism. As odd: Justice Thomas, the most consistent originalist on the Court, was in dissent. In his view, any reinvigoration of the Privileges or Immunities Clause should displace, rather than augment, the untethered jurisprudence that expansively interpreted other clauses of the 14th Amendment to cover the neutered Privileges or Immunities Clause, and it should be revived as originally contemplated. This article begins to take up the invitation made by Justice Thomas to explore the original meaning of the Privileges or Immunities Clause, contending that it (and its sister clause in Article IV of the original Constitution) was one of the clauses actually designed to codify the basic natural rights principles of the Declaration of Independence.
Writing in the Virginia Law Review, a distinguished federal judge maintains that true conservatives are required to substitute principles of judicial restraint for an inquiry into the original meaning of the Constitution. Accordingly, argues J. Harvie Wilkinson, III, the Supreme Court's Second Amendment decision in District of Columbia v. Heller is an activist decision just like Roe v. Wade: "[B]oth cases found judicially enforceable substantive rights only ambiguously rooted in the Constitution's text." In this response, we challenge his critique.Part I shows that Judge Wilkinson's analogy between Roe and Heller is untenable. The right of the people to keep and bear arms is in the Constitution, and the right to abortion is not. Contrary to Judge Wilkinson, the genuine conservative critique of Roe is based on the Constitution, not on judicial "values." Judge Wilkinson, moreover, does not show that Heller's interpretation of the Second Amendment is refuted, or even called into serious question, by Justice Stevens' dissenting opinion. Part II shows that Judge Wilkinson himself does not adhere to the "neutral principle" that he claims to derive from "judicial values." Under the principle of judicial restraint that he articulates, many now-reviled statutes, including the Jim Crow laws of the twentieth century, should have been upheld by the courts. Judge Wilkinson does not accept the consequences of his own supposedly neutral principle, preferring instead to endorse or condemn Supreme Court decisions solely on the basis of his policy preferences. That is not judicial restraint. It is judicial lawlessness.
In these Holmes Lectures, delivered a century after the publication of Oliver Wendell Holmes's great essay The Path of the Law, Judge Posner argues for an essentially Holmesian conception of the proper relations among modern normative moral philosophy ("academic moralism"), morality, and law. Academic moralism, he argues, lacks either the intellectual cogency or the emotional power to change people's beliefs or behavior; the power to do so resides in "moral entrepreneurs," which academic moralists emphatically are not. Academic moralism's lack of cogency disqualifies it to guide judicial decisionmaking even - in fact, especially - in cases involving controversial moral issues, such as abortion and euthanasia, as the Supreme Court has recognized.
The debate over judicial activism is nothing new, but recent years have seen the debate becoming increasingly bitter. In The Myth of Judicial Activism, Professor Kermit Roosevelt tries to provide a more levelheaded assessment of the judiciary's role. But his approach - which largely adopts the consensus of the legal establishment - suffers from a fundamental flaw: like Judge Robert Bork and Justice Steven Breyer before him, Roosevelt centers his jurisprudence around preserving democratic decisionmaking, rather than protecting liberty. This basic error renders this approach incompatible with the constitutional design, and distracts all of these thinkers from the more fundamental philosophical issues that lie at the heart of the judicial activism debate. This article uses Roosevelt's book as a point of departure for a more general discussion over the judiciary's role in preserving the fundamental constitutional value of liberty, and explains why focusing on democracy rather than liberty leads to erroneous conclusions.
This article examines the meaning of the terms privileges and immunities as used in Article IV of the U.S. Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment. It begins by tracing the American use of the terms to April 10, 1606 in the first Charter of Virginia. Building upon the work of other scholars and citing original documents, it concludes that these words has a well-established meaning as “rights” well before the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted. The article notes that in Justice Miller’s decision in the Slaughter-House Cases he refers to the privileges and immunities of Corfield v. Coryell as “those rights which are fundamental.” In exploring the meaning of the terms, the article notes it breadth, as articulated by Section 1 author John Bingham (R-Ohio) and Justice Strong in West Virginia v. Strauder. Examples are provided from Congressman Bingham, Justice Bradley, and Judge Thomas G. Jones in his turn of the century decision in Ex parte Riggins. Insight into how to apply the privileges or immunities clause is taken from Justice Robert Jackson, Justice Joseph P. Bradley and Justice Benjamin R. Curtis. Insight into the possibility that privilege and immunities would change is seen in the agreement between Justice Miller and Justice Bradley that constitutional amendments could change the content of the words. Further examples are given through the adoption of treaties and the 1866 Civil Rights Act. Because some concern has been expressed concerning the effect of using privileges or immunities clause upon establishment clause jurisidpurence, the history of the “secession” of slaveholders from the national churches and their establishment of pro-slavery churches which prohibited free exercise is examined. The insights provided by this history leads to the conclusion that a principled application of the privileges or immunities clause would not work any change in the current establishment clause jurisprudence. This approach is also tested with respect to a matter currently pending on certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court: the enforcement of a right to bear arms against the states. The clauses are also analyzed to see how they would better protect the writ of habeas corpus than the inference drawn from Article I, Section 9, Clause 2. Finally, an example of how the use of the privileges and immunities clause might give a more principled and secure protection for established rights is illustrated by the application of the clauses to a “right of family life” that would replace the substantive due process approach used in Moore v. City of East Cleveland. The article concludes by noting that in spite of Saenz v. Roe, scholars and lawyers have not been very diligent in advancing claims under the privilege or immunities clause and provides reasons why such course should be pursued.
Lawrence v. Texas produces a desirable policy result, but it deserves condemnation as a legal decision. It repudiates the Supreme Court's most recent attempt to put doctrinal restraints on the most anticonstitutional doctrine in constitutional law - substantive due process. That doctrine, for which the Court has never provided a successful textual justification, has been selectively employed over the decades to advance a variety of political agendas popular with Supreme Court majorities. In 1938, Carolene Products put meaningful restraints on substantive due process, taming that doctrine for about a quarter of a century. With Griswold and Roe v. Wade, the Court adopted a new substantive due process agenda - sexual freedom. In Washington v. Glucksberg, the Court sought to restore most of the limits of the Carolene Products approach, while leaving the Griswold-Roe line in place, by adopting a test requiring that newly recognized rights be deeply rooted in the nation's history and tradition. Lawrence repudiates the Glucksberg approach and instead deploys an undisciplined form of judicial mysticism. Notwithstanding the availability of plausible arguments based on precedent to invalidate the Texas law, the Lawrence Court chose instead to rely on a series of utterly untenable arguments and analytically empty bombast. We argue that the Lawrence approach is not law in any meaningful sense of the term, but only a vehicle for judges to impose their own political preferences on the nation. We also rebut some justifications that could be offered in defense of Lawrence. We show that Professor Robert Post's concept of a conversation between the Court and the nation obliterates the concept of law as something distinct from politics, and offers a theory of judicial review that would justify even a decision like Plessy v. Ferguson. Second, we show that Professor Randy Barnett fails in his effort to provide Lawrence with a foundation in the Constitution because he misinterprets the Ninth Amendment and the Privileges or Immunities Clause. Third, we rebut those who would defend Lawrence on pragmatic grounds by explaining why we think competitive federalism is a far superior mechanism for creating new norms of liberty, and for correcting the mistakes that are inevitable in any process of policy development. Finally, we outline the case for repudiating the Griswold-Roe-Lawrence line of cases and for using the Glucksberg test to return the Court's substantive due process jurisprudence roughly to where it stood as a result of Carolene Products.
In Kelo v. New London, the United States Supreme Court allowed state officials to seize homes and businesses and transfer the property to private owners for development, even though the Constitution declares that government may only take property "for public use." Kelo was greeted with popular outrage and calls for political reform. But few commentators have discussed the fact that it represents a fundamental change in American political philosophy. In 1829, the Supreme Court said that "a legislative act to transfer the property of A. to B. without his consent" had been "resisted as inconsistent with just principles, by every judicial tribunal in which it has been attempted to be enforced." But by 1978, the Court held that the Constitution does not require compensation when a person's property is taken for "some public program adjusting the benefits and burdens of economic life to promote the common good," and in Kelo, the Court held: "Promoting economic development is a traditional and long accepted function of government." In this article, I explore the political philosophy underlying this change. I begin with the influence of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and William Blackstone on early American courts, and how these courts were divided regarding the boundaries on state power. I then describe the abandonment of Lockean philosophy during the Progressive era, and conclude with a discussion of how this debate is reflected in Kelo and its dissents, and how addressing eminent domain in the wake of Kelo requires philosophical as well as political change.