Rights: citizenship, speech, equality, due processDerechos: ciudadanía, expresión, igualdad, debido proceso
A state law bars marriages between citizens and noncitizens and is applied equally to both. The best constitutional analysis:
Loving supplies both routes: a suspect classification under equal protection and a fundamental liberty under due process.Loving da las dos vías: una categoría sospechosa bajo igualdad y una libertad fundamental bajo el debido proceso.
Loving v. Virginia (1967); Graham v. Richardson (1971)
A city ordinance limits bakeries to a nine-hour workday to protect workers from fatigue. A bakery owner sues, invoking liberty of contract. Today the court will:
The same facts that won in 1905 lose today; that reversal is the Lochner-to-Carolene story.Los mismos hechos que ganaron en 1905 pierden hoy; ese giro es la historia de Lochner a Carolene.
Lochner (1905); West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (1937); Carolene Products n.4 (1938)
A Texas statute makes it a crime to burn the American flag in a way that offends onlookers. Under the First Amendment:
Texas v. Johnson (1989) struck down exactly this statute; the government may not prohibit expression because society finds the idea offensive. Mexico, by contrast, criminalizes insulting the flag.Texas v. Johnson (1989) anuló exactamente esta ley; el gobierno no puede prohibir la expresión porque la sociedad encuentre ofensiva la idea. México, en cambio, tipifica el ultraje a la bandera.
Texas v. Johnson (1989)
A child is born in Houston to parents who entered the country without authorization. Under the Fourteenth Amendment as interpreted since Wong Kim Ark, the child is:
Birthright citizenship under the Citizenship Clause; Elk is the exception that proves the rule, and recent executive attempts to narrow the clause have been litigated against this precedent.Ciudadanía por nacimiento bajo la Citizenship Clause; Elk es la excepción que confirma la regla, y los intentos recientes del ejecutivo por restringirla se han litigado contra este precedente.
United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898); Elk v. Wilkins (1884)
Which classification triggers intermediate rather than strict scrutiny?
Sex and illegitimacy get the middle tier: important interest, substantial relation.Sexo y filiación reciben el nivel intermedio: interés importante, relación sustancial.
Craig v. Boren (1976); United States v. Virginia (1996)
A private golf club in Dallas refuses to admit Black members. A rejected applicant sues under the Equal Protection Clause. Result?
State action is the gate to every Fourteenth Amendment claim; statutes fill the private gap.La acción estatal es la puerta de todo reclamo bajo la Decimocuarta Enmienda; las leyes llenan el hueco privado.
Civil Rights Cases (1883); Moose Lodge v. Irvis (1972)
Racial classifications must survive : a compelling interest and narrow tailoring; ordinary economic regulation needs only a .
The tiers are the grammar of equal protection.Los niveles son la gramática de la igualdad ante la ley.
What distinguishes liberalism in the economic sense from liberalism in the civil-rights sense, and how does American constitutional law treat each today? Answer in five or six sentences.
AnswerRespuesta: Economic liberalism treats freedom of contract, property and markets as the core liberties and sees regulation as the threat; civil-rights liberalism treats personal autonomy, equality and the protection of minorities as the core and often uses regulation to secure them. Between 1905 and 1937 the Supreme Court constitutionalized the first, striking down labor laws under liberty of contract (Lochner). After 1937 it abandoned that role and, following Carolene Products footnote four, reviews economic regulation only for a rational basis while applying strict scrutiny to laws that burden fundamental personal rights or target suspect classes. Loving is the model of the second kind: a racial classification and the liberty to marry, both strictly protected. Mexico took the opposite starting point in 1917, constitutionalizing labor and social rights while leaving economic freedom to ordinary law, and has moved toward strong protection of personal liberties through the free development of personality doctrine.
- two meanings of liberty
- Lochner era protected economic liberty
- 1937 and footnote four: rational basis for economic, strict for personal rights and suspect classes
- Loving as civil-rights model
- Mexican contrast
Are courts agents of societal change? Use Brown and its aftermath in your answer (four or five sentences).
AnswerRespuesta: Brown declared school segregation unconstitutional in 1954, a step the political branches had not taken, which shows that courts can initiate and legitimize change. But Brown II's all deliberate speed formula allowed a decade of delay, Southern officials resisted until Cooper v. Aaron and federal troops, and real desegregation followed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the conditioning of federal funds. The honest answer is that courts can start change and give it constitutional authority, but they depend on the other branches and on public opinion to finish it. In Mexico the SCJN has played a similar role on same-sex marriage and abortion, with the same dependence on legislatures to generalize the result.
- Brown as initiator
- Brown II delay and resistance
- Civil Rights Act did the work
- courts start, others finish
- Mexican parallel