So Why Not Roe?

In today’s Stop the Beach opinion, Justice Scalia (joined by the other three conservatives) criticizes Justice Kennedy for arguing that what Scalia consider “judicial takings” should instead be handled as violation of the Due Process Clause:

The second problem is that we have held for many years (logically or not) that the “liberties” protected by Substantive Due Process do not include economic liberties. See, e.g., Lincoln Fed. Labor Union v. Northwestern Iron & Metal Co., 335 U. S. 525, 536 (1949). [EDITOR: But cf. Schware v. Board of Examiners, 353 U. S. 232 (1957) h/t Tim Sandefur]

The “logically or not” part gets me; Justice Scalia is not a lower court judge. If he think it’s not logical to strictly segregate economic and non-economic rights, he has the power to do something about it.

Imagine, instead, Justice Kennedy writing this sentence in an abortion case, in response to Scalia:

The second problem is that we have held for many years (logically or not) that the “liberties” protected by Substantive Due Process include the right to have an abortion.

Roe has been around for thirty-seven years now, and it’s high time the conservative Justices stop pretending that a decades-old opinion, on which there is huge cultural reliance (as sexual mores have changed in part to reflect the availability of abortion) is somehow less “precedential” than equally bad opinions from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s.

Of course, Scalia does have an answer to this analogy–we should avoid any decision reminiscent of the dreaded “Lochner era”: “Justice Kennedy’s language … propels us back to what is referred to (usually deprecatingly) as “the Lochner era.”

And here’s my response to Scalia, from the second to last paragraph of my forthcoming “Rehabilitating Lochner:”

Lochner serves as a uniquely important negative exemplar of constitutional error in constitutional law scholarship, op-ed columns and blog posts, and even in Supreme Court decisions. When the Justices (and others) use Lochner this way, as shorthand for what they consider the “activist” sins of their opponents, they are substituting empty rhetoric for meaningful constitutional argument.

Thanks to Josh Blackman for the tip.

Powered by WordPress. Designed by Woo Themes