Law Commons^™

Substantive Due Process And A Comparison Of Approaches To Sexual Liberty, William Council

Fordham Law Review

Over 150 years ago, Congress passed and the states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, banning states from passing or enforcing laws based on unconstitutional classifications and protecting persons in the United States from adjudication without due process. For over one hundred years, however, courts and commentators have been fighting over the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause’s controversial protections of substantive rights. The U.S. Supreme Court has applied inconsistent methodologies to these substantive due process claims, attempting to walk a tightrope between the Court’s power to subjectively announce new rights as “fundamental” and the traditional role of the states’ plenary police powers. …