Origins of Substantive Due Process

Question 1

What are two types of Due Process?

Answer 1

Procedural-set of procedural requirements Gov. has to follow before depriving you of life, liberty, or property. The result is that if statute is validly enacted then procedural due process can do nothing to change it regardless of what liberties it takes away.

Substantive-response to problem. Look at substance of law and effects. Substantive due process forbids or disfavors certain forms of gov. action regardless of the correctness of the procedures used. Some rights so fundamental nothing can justify taking them away

Question 2

Equal Protection v. Due Process as Source of Rights

Answer 2

-Main difference is how the Constitutional argument is phrased.
•If right is safeguarded under due process issue is whether the government’s interference is justified by a sufficient purpose.
•If protected under equal protection issue is whether to government’s discrimination as to who can exercise the right is justified by a sufficient purpose
oIf law denies the right to everyone→ due process
o If law denies a right to some while allowing it to others→ equal protection or the violation of the right can be objected under due process.

Question 3

Lochner

Answer 3

• Bakers Act: limits number of hours that bakers can work
• Unconstitutional→ Infringes on right of employer and employee to negotiate and make contract.
• Court recognizes that state have power to protect safety, health, morals, and general welfare of public.
• Purpose→protecting health
• Court says: NO satisfactory reason to regulate bakers hours. Don’t lack intelligence, they can negotiate, no showing quality of bread affected by length of time bakers work.
• If court accepted health rationale there would be NO limiting principle, Could apply to every occupation.

-DISSENT: State leg. More able to decide how to take care of their citizens. →interfering w/ will of democratic bodies. Const. not intended to further a particular economic theory

Question 4

What did Substantive Due Process first Protect?

Answer 4

Economic rights like freedom of contract. Gov. could not interfere unless valid police function

Question 5

West Coast Hotel

Answer 5

Signals end of Lochnerism

• Fixed minimum wage for women and minors upheld
• Court says: regulation which is reasonable in relation to its subject and is adopted in the interests of the community is due process.
• NOW ACCEPTS that state has interest in preventing the exploitation of workers
• New policy of judicial deference to government economic regulation. State gov. not limited to regulating only to advance explicit police powers.

Question 6

Carolene Products

Answer 6

• Filled Milk Act→prohibits substance obtained by mixing milk and vegetable oil.
• Court says:Economic regulation should be upheld so long as they are supported by a conceivable rational basis, even if it cannot be proved it was the legislature’s actual intent.
• Deference to legislature regarding laws that govern ordinary commercial transaction. Courts indulge a presumption of Constitutionality.
  • Applies Rational Basis
  • FOOTNOTE 4→ courts generally will defer to leg. And presume that laws are constitutional as long as don’t interferes w/ individual rights or restricts the ability of the political process to repeal undesirable leg. Or discriminates against “discrete and insulate minority”.

Question 7

Williamson v. Lee Optical

Answer 7

• Law requires prescription from optometrist to get new frames. Optician can’t just put them in.
• Court says: Leg. Might have a number of conceivable reasons for this law. This is enough. Indulging Legislature w/ rational basis
• CURRENT STATUS OF COURT EVAL. OF DUE PROCESS: “Law need not be in every respect logically consistent w/ its aims to be constitutional. It Is enough that there is an evil at hand for correction, and that it might be thought that the particular legislative measure was a rational way to correct it.”