Law Commons^™

People's Court, Nicholas S. Zeppos

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Supreme Court's opinion in Bowers v. Hardwick' contains the usual cant about the legitimacy of the judicial function. In holding that the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment does not recognize a fundamental right to practice homosexual sodomy, the Court cautioned that "[t]he Court is most vulnerable and comes nearest to illegitimacy when it deals with judge-made constitutional law having little or no cognizable roots in the language or design of the Constitution. What exactly did the Court mean? That the public would refuse to obey judicial judgments if the Court were to recognize rights not "found in" …