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Julie A. Nice

Selected Works

Suspect class

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

No Scrutiny Whatsoever: Deconstitutionalization Of Poverty Law, Dual Rules Of Law, And Dialogic Default, Julie Nice Dec 2007

No Scrutiny Whatsoever: Deconstitutionalization Of Poverty Law, Dual Rules Of Law, And Dialogic Default, Julie Nice

Julie A. Nice

This article traces how the Supreme Court has deconstitutionalized Poverty Law by four departures from normal constitutional doctrine: first, by categorical immunization of “social or economic legislation”; second, by circumvention of normal suspect class or classification analysis; third, by application of rationality review in a reflexive manner to uphold governmental regulation; and fourth, by ratcheting down from the heightened scrutiny normally used for protection of established fundamental rights. In particular, she explores the historical emergence of judicial deference for “social or economic legislation,” and finds that Justice Douglas, who coined the phrase, specifically rejected deference for laws that disadvantaged poor …


Equal Protection’S Antinomies And The Promise Of A Co-Constitutive Approach, Julie Nice Dec 1999

Equal Protection’S Antinomies And The Promise Of A Co-Constitutive Approach, Julie Nice

Julie A. Nice

This article explores how a central insight of Law and Society scholarship – that law and society are mutually constitutive – explains and informs Equal Protection jurisprudence. Professor Nice describes the state of equal protection discourse as caught in perpetual antinomic debates, with courts typically endorsing the more conservative alternative within such debates, including: (1) adopting assimilation (not anti-subordination) as the goal; (2) treating subordinated persons the same as (not different than) dominant persons; (3) looking backward toward remediation (not forward toward substantive equality); (4) requiring blindness (not consciousness) of the relevant trait; (5) focusing on the classifying trait (not …