Abstract
The lines drawn to separate and distinguish the social sciences of economics, politics, and law are both real and imaginary. This Comment presents the hypothesis that a certain political theory has as natural co-tenants in the house of coherence a certain economic and legal philosophy. To explain and expand this hypothesis, two separate inquiries are focused upon. First, can a belief that government has a limited, or perhaps a nonexistent, role in policing what individuals speak, with whom they associate, or what system of religious beliefs they embrace coherently exist in the same framework of knowledge which also has as one of its elements the belief that the value one places upon his labor, the products available in the marketplace, and the extent that one individual's wealth can be taken and distributed to another are subjects wide open to government regulation? The twentieth century has seen the United States Supreme Court struggle with the task of defining the substance of individual liberty and property rights protected by the due process clauses of the fifth and fourteenth amendments. Today, the result of that struggle is a two-tiered definition of that liberty. If a government regulation is one that can be colored by the Court as a regulation of the economic environment of society it will surely withstand judicial scrutiny. On the other hand, if the Court characterizes the regulation as one touching upon what has been characterized as a fundamental liberty, it will be subject to a much more exacting inspection. With this in mind, the second major inquiry of this Comment is one that focuses upon the Court's decisions under the due process clause and whether they reflect a coherent mixture of political, economic, and legal theory.
Recommended Citation
Glen R. Anstine,
A House Divided: Substantive Due Process in the Twentieth Century,
62 Neb. L. Rev.
(1983)
Available at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/nlr/vol62/iss2/5