01/19/06
Top 10 Supreme Court cases to overturn
see "Top 10 Supreme Court Decisions That Should Be Reversed"
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/lists.php?id=11560
Here, from Human Events Online, is an interesting list of Supreme Court cases which scream to be revisted and overturned.
Although this won't be popular with my true "conservative" readers, here is the modification I would make:
Replace their #1 (Roe v Wade) with the 1938 case United States v. Carolene Products Co in which (via the opinion's infamous "Footnote Four") the Supreme Court explicitly said that it would not exercise strict scrutiny over economic and property-related laws passed by Congress. It is this inexcusable abdication of their specific constitutional task which allowed the New Deal and which continues to allow Congress to regulate almost anything from marijuana to milk to guns as "interstate commerce".
You can find more information about the travesty that was the Carolene case at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Carolene_Products_Co.
and http://www.agh-attorneys.com/4_us_v_carolene_products_company.htm
2 comments
In any case, I have never understood the hostility that some libertarians have toward Carolene Products, especially given the historical context. Given that "strict scrutiny, always" has never existed, at least not since McCulloch v. Maryland, at least Carolone Products reasserts what I consider to be perhaps the single most fundamental axiom of libertarianism: that insular minorities must be protected from the unbridled will of the majority.
If you have a problem with the lack of economic substantive due process, then stick to Wickard or West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, which overturned Lochner.
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