917, 923 (1988) (citing Carolene Products as the origin of heightened scrutiny). Gottlieb, Compelling Governmental Interests: An Essential but Unanalyzed Term in Constitutional Adjudication, 68 B.U. responded to this increased risk of potentially meddlesome state action by reserving the possibility that state action that impinges on select constitutional values may warrant “more exacting judicial scrutiny” than does state action otherwise. 726, 731–33 (1963) (upholding a state statute that prohibited the business of debt adjusting under most circumstances). 590, 592–94, 596–97 (1917) (reversing as unconstitutional an interpretation of a state statute that would have operated de facto to prohibit the business of employment agencies), with Ferguson v. ushered in an expanded range of constitutionally “legitimate” purposes. Critically, however, the early cases did not generally challenge the importance of the government’s ends once those ends had been established as legitimate.īut during the wax of the New Deal regulatory state, the wane of the Court’s recognition of constitutional economic rights 11 × 11. Bernstein, Essay, The Conservative Origins of Strict Scrutiny, 19 Geo. Pretext was not the only rationale for striking down state action that purported to serve legitimate ends many early cases, for example, struck down measures that burdened rights to a greater degree than was necessary to serve the state’s asserted ends. Courts reviewed legislation to constrain government’s reach, so that A’s property rights were not abridged to advance B’s private interests.”). 275, 283 (2013) (“Property rights could be regulated solely for public uses and ends. Katz, Protective Labor Legislation in the Courts: Substantive Due Process and Fairness in the Progressive Era, 31 Law & Hist. and gives it to B” (italics omitted)) Claudio J. (3 Dall.) 386, 388 (1798) (opinion of Chase, J.) (“It is against all reason and justice, for a people to entrust a Legislature with” the power to enact “a law that takes property from A. And those other motives - economic redistribution through the regulation of private contract - were simply not constitutionally legitimate under the Court’s then-conception of economic liberty. led the Court to suspect that the law was, “in reality, passed from other motives.” 9 × 9. at 61 (requiring “some fair ground, reasonable in and of itself, to say that there is material danger to the public health or to the health of the employés, if the hours of labor are not curtailed”). rather, the ineffectual manner in which the statute served those interests 8 × 8. Supreme Court’s recognition of a personal right to economic liberty under the Due Process Clause reached its apogee in 1905 with the Court’s invalidation of a New York statute that limited bakers’ working hours, for example, the Court did not impugn as insufficiently weighty the state’s asserted interests in “safeguard the public health” and the health of the bakers 7 × 7. 45, 57 (1905) (requiring only that the challenged state action have a “direct relation, as a means to an end, and the end itself. ![]() And up through the early twentieth century, even state action that encroached on constitutionally protected rights was lawful as long as it possessed a rational relationship to some legitimate end. (4 Wheat.) 316, 421 (1819).Īt both the state and federal levels, then, any legitimate state interest can in most cases provide a constitutionally sufficient justification for state action. As Chief Justice Marshall once famously defined the scope of federal power, “Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the onstitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the onstitution, are constitutional.” 5 × 5. (9 Wheat.) 1, 197 (1824) (“he sovereignty of Congress, though limited to specified objects, is plenary as to those objects. it too may as a baseline proposition take any action that is rationally related to a legitimate exercise of its constitutionally enumerated powers. And although the federal government acts within a more restricted ambit of lawful authority, 3 × 3. 141, 152–54 (1982), but the actions of state governments generally enjoy a “strong presumption of validity,” Heller v. Additional constraints, such as federal preemption of state law in certain fields, sometimes apply, see, e.g., Fid. Where no fundamental rights or protected social classes are implicated, the states may typically, within the constraints of the constitutional prohibition on arbitrary or discriminatory legislation, adopt any measure that is rationally related to a legitimate governmental interest. It is a fundamental principle of constitutional law that a state government’s police power “is one of the least limitable of governmental powers.” 1 × 1.
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