Williamson v. Lee Optical - Further Readings
Appellant
Mac Q. Williamson, Attorney General of Oklahoma
Appellee
Lee Optical of Oklahoma
Appellant's Claim
That an Oklahoma law, which prohibited persons other than licensed optometrists and ophthalmologists from fitting lenses for eyeglasses, did not constitute a violation of the Due Process Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
Chief Lawyer for Appellant
James C. Harkin, Assistant Attorney General of Oklahoma
Chief Lawyer for Appellee
Dick H. Woods
Justices for the Court
Hugo Lafayette Black, Harold Burton, Tom C. Clark, William O. Douglas (writing for the Court), Felix Frankfurter, Sherman Minton, Stanley Forman Reed, Earl Warren
Justices Dissenting
None (John Marshall Harlan II did not participate)
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
28 March 1955
Decision
Upheld the power of the legislatures to make state laws regulating business,and declared that "The day is gone when this Court uses the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to strike down state laws . .. "
Significance
Williamson v. Lee Optical was one of several cases marking the death knell of "substantive due process." Starting with the New Deal under PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, the implementation of national economicpolicies had threatened the concept. In 1955, with Williamson v. Lee Optical, the Court was in the midst of a paradigm shift in its views on that concept: gone were the days, as Justice Douglas said, when the Court would usesubstantive due process on behalf of businesspeople such as the appellee inthis case; but a day was just dawning when the concept would be applied in favor of other constituencies.
A Vision Problem in Oklahoma
Although it would ultimately involve lofty constitutional ideas, Williamson v. Lee Optical arose from a simple and practical set of needs concerning the sale of eyeglasses. Foremost among these, from the perspective of consumers, was the desire to have the fastest, easiest, and cheapest service in fitting a pair of glasses. Such service would likely come from an optician, which the Court would later define as "an artisan qualified to grind lenses, fill prescription, and fit frames." The services of such a practitioner would undoubtedly be cheaper than those of an ophthalmologist, "a duly licensed physician who specializes in the care of eyes"; or of an optometrist, a doctor who"examines eyes for refractive error, recognizes (but does not treat) diseases of the eye, and fills prescriptions for eyeglasses." Whereas an optician would have only the training necessary to carry out his or her fairly limited tasks, the optometrist or ophthalmologist would have the education of a medical doctor, making him or her more than qualified to fit a pair of glasses fora patient--and he or she would most likely charge accordingly.
The question revolved around the right of the state of Oklahoma to prohibit the sale of lenses fitted by an optician. The answer lay in Title 59 of the Oklahoma state laws, Section 2 of which stated in part:
These were only the opening words, but the point was clearly established: since Chapter 11 provided for the licensing of ophthalmologists, and Chapter 13of optometrists, opticians were effectively kept out of the lens-fitting business in Oklahoma. To opticians, this exclusion seemed particularly unfair, given the existence of retail establishments selling ready-to-wear glasses. Similarly questionable, from the view of the opticians, were provisions making it illegal for them to advertise, or for anyone to rent retail space to any person "purporting to do eye examination or visual care."
Lee Optical filed a suit in district court, charging that these laws were unconstitutional. The three judges of the district court agreed on most counts.Specifically, under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, theydeclared unconstitutional the provision in the Oklahoma statute making it unlawful for anyone who was not a licensed optometrist or ophthalmologist to fitlenses, or to duplicate or replace lenses, except under the written authority of an ophthalmologist or optometrist licensed in Oklahoma. While it was within the power of a state to regulate something as vital as eye examination, the district court held, the requirement in question was not "reasonably and rationally related to the health and welfare of the people." The district court similarly declared unconstitutional most other provisions in the Oklahoma statute, including the prohibition against advertising, with the exception ofa portion of Section 3 which made it unlawful to "solicit the sale of spectacles, eye glasses, lenses, frames," etc.
The state of Oklahoma, in the person of Attorney General Mac Q. Williamson, appealed. By the time it came before the Supreme Court, the case had been split into two parts: Williamson v. Lee Optical, designated as No. 184 bythe Court, in which Oklahoma challenged the lower court's ruling of its lawsas unconstitutional; and the case of Lee Optical v. Williamson (No. 185), a subordinate legal action challenging the lower court's declaration thatthe prohibition against soliciting the sale of eyeglasses was indeed constitutional. Along the way to the Supreme Court, both sides attracted national attention from professional associations relating to eye care, and from states.While Dick H. Woods argued for Lee Optical in both 184 and 185, by special leave of the Court, Herbert A. Bergson argued for the Guild of Prescription Opticians as amici curiae in 184. Similarly, whereas Oklahoma's assistant attorney general, James C. Harkin, represented his state as appellant in 184 and appellee in 185, Philip Perlman argued for the American Optometric Association as amicus curiae. Joining Oklahoma and the Optometric Association in urging reversal in 184 and affirmation in 185 were the states of Arkansas, California, and Mississippi.
Substantive Due Process: From Slaughterhouse to Optician's Shop
At issue in Williamson was the principle of Substantive Due Process, aconcept which made its first appearance in the famous Slaughterhouse Cases (1873). The latter cases challenged a state monopoly on slaughterhousesin Louisiana, and were brought by a group of butchers who argued that the policy prevented them from practicing their trade. At that time, Justice JosephP. Bradley stated that "a law which prohibits a large class of citizens fromadopting . . . or from following a lawful employment . . . does deprive themof liberty as well as property, without due process of law." The case of Munn v. Illinois (1877) was another commerce-related legal action which touched on the question of due process. Had the grain storage facilities at issue in the case not been "affected with a public interest," the Court suggested, it might have given the case closer scrutiny in light of due process.
Such scrutiny finally came, through a long series of steps, with the Court'slandmark ruling in Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway Company v. theState of Minnesota (1890). This time the Court declared a state economiclaw unconstitutional, and identified the courts of the land, not the state legislatures, as the bodies which should have final say in matters involving business rates. The ruling centered around the question of Due Process, which is guaranteed in Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment:
The ruling in this case found that as a corporate "person," the Chicago, Milwaukee and Saint Paul Railroad was entitled to protection of its rights underthe Due Process clause.
Hence in a great irony, the Fourteenth Amendment, passed by Congress following the Civil War with the aim of protecting the rights of freed slaves, instead saw its primary application in service to corporations. In a series of rulings throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth, the Court upheld corporations' "freedom of contract," and ruled against laws setting minimum wages or maximum daily working hours. The tide of substantive due process in favor of corporations continued for more than a generation, until it was stopped by the Depression and the New Deal programs initiated in the 1930s.
In its 1934 ruling in Nebbia v. New York, the Court began to distanceitself from its earlier stance, declaring that a state could regulate milk prices whether or not the milk industry could be judged as one "affected with public interest." As for its role of protecting business from the encroachments of state government, the Court declared that it was no longer a "super-legislature." With the liberal President Franklin D. Roosevelt ascendant, the Court began going back on its earlier pro-business activism, and in 1941 JusticeDouglas wrote for the unanimous Court in Olsen v. Nebraska that "We are not concerned . . . with the wisdom, need, or appropriateness" of a statelaw regulating employment agency fees. Such questions, Douglas wrote, "suggest a choice which should be left where . . . it was left by the Constitution--to the states and to Congress."
"The Day Is Gone . . . "
Fourteen years later, in Williamson v. Lee Optical, Douglas deliveredthe opinion for a once again unanimous Court of eight judges. (Justice John Marshall Harlan II, recently sworn in, took no part in the proceedings.) The Court reversed in part and affirmed in part, but none of its rulings favored Lee Optical or the Guild of Prescription Opticians: rather, the Court's rulingreversed those parts of the district court judgment which overturned Oklahoma law, and affirmed the lower court's ruling that the law prohibiting solicitation of the sale of lenses was constitutional. As he had earlier done in Olsen, Douglas made it clear that the Court was not interested in evaluating the state law from the standpoint of logic, reason, or common sense: "TheOklahoma law," he wrote, "may exact a needless, wasteful requirement in manycases." Regardless of this distinct possibility, however, "it is for the legislature, not the courts, to balance the advantages and disadvantages of thenew requirement." Furthermore, "the present law does not require a new examination of the eyes every time the frames are changed or the lenses duplicated.For if the old prescription is on file with the opticians, he can go ahead and make the new fitting or duplicate the lenses." But again, "the law need not be in every respect logically consistent with its aims to be constitutional. It is enough that there is an evil at hand for correction, and that it might be thought that the particular legislative measure was a rational way to correct it."
What was at question, instead, was due process, and here too Justice Douglasmade quick work of the opticians' case: in perhaps the most famous sentence of his ruling in this case, Douglas announced that
As for the specific due process questions at issue in Williamson, Douglas wrote that these were "answered in principle" by Roschen v. Ward (1929), in which the Court upheld a New York law preventing the sale of eyeglasses at a retail outlet without the supervision of a licensed physician or optometrist. The Court at that time had placed its confidence in professionalsto uphold the intent of the law: " . . . wherever the requirements of the Actstop, there can be no doubt that the presence and superintendence of the specialist tend to diminish an evil."
Thus the Court dealt with the first portion of the Oklahoma law in question,the part of Section 2 that prevented persons other than licensed optometristsor ophthalmologists from fitting, duplicating, or replacing lenses. Douglasthen proceeded to examine the various other claims at issue. With regard to the apparent inequity in the state's exempting retailers of ready-to-wear glasses from its regulations, the Court left that decision up to the state: "Thelegislature may select one phase of one field and apply a remedy there, neglecting the others . . . " Besides, "The prohibition of the Equal Protection Clause goes no further than the invidious discrimination. We cannot say that that point has been reached here. For all this record shows, the ready-to-wearbranch of this business may not loom large in Oklahoma . . . "
As for the prohibition against renting retail space for the purposes of doingeye examination, this was "on the same constitutional footing as the denialto corporations of the right to practice general dentistry." In both situations, the aim was "an attempt to free the profession . . . from all taints of commercialism." The Oklahoma law prohibiting business from soliciting the saleof frames, mountings, and "other optical appliances," the Court held, was likewise constitutional: "An eyeglass frame, considered in isolation, is only apiece of merchandise. But an eyeglass frame is not used in isolation . . . it is used with lenses, and lenses, pertaining as they do to the human eye, enter the field of health." Therefore "we see no constitutional reason why a State may not treat all who deal with the human eye as members of a professionwho should use no merchandising methods for obtaining customers." Given thisstatement, the ruling in 185, regarding the prohibition of soliciting sale oflenses, etc., was obvious. Affirming in part and reversing in part, the Court upheld the constitutionality of all aspects of the Oklahoma law.
Impact
It is interesting to note that both Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) andRoe v. Wade (1973) make mention of Williamson in several places. These two cases, the former involving birth control and the latter abortion, were landmarks not only with regard to personal freedom in sexual matters,but in their "new" application of due process. Williamson, while seemingly striking the final blow against due process in its business application, came at a time when the concept was finding new life in relation to privacyand personal freedom. Starting with Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942), the Court had begun to apply due process to individual rights, and by the time ofGriswold, a decade after Williamson, that concept was established. But conservatives were just as wary of the application of due process topersonal issues as liberals had been of its uses in favor of business: Justice Black in Griswold warned that due process was "no less dangerous when used to enforce this Court's views about personal rights than those about economic rights." Justice William H. Rehnquist, in his dissent from the Roev. Wade decision, made a similar point. In the end, Williamson can be seen as a milestone marking the end of one era with regard to due process, and the beginnings of another.
Related Cases
Substantive Due Process
Due process of law, guaranteed by the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments to theU.S. Constitution, demands fairness for individuals in legal procedures applied by federal and state governments, respectively. Due process judicial deliberations involve both substantive and procedural dimensions. Whereas procedural due process looks at the manner in which individual rights are protected from governmental arbitrary actions such as right to an attorney or freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, substantive due process addresses the actual subject matter being regulated in a law or regulation, particularly personal rights or liberties.
By the 1990s, substantive due process court decisions had addressed most fundamental liberties expressly found in the first ten amendments as well as liberties not specifically described. Such unspoken liberties include the right to privacy in matters of personal choice--marriage, sexual concerns, parenthood, abortion, or "right to die" issues. The Supreme Court found the guaranteeof these liberties embedded in various aspects of U.S. legal history including common law, moral philosophy, equal protection, and court precedents. The Court would sustain state or federal regulation restricting fundamental liberties only if the government could demonstrate a compelling reason in the public interest.
Sources
Keynes, Edward. Liberty, Property, and Privacy: Toward a Jurisprudence ofSubstantive Due Process. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996.
Mac Q. Williamson, Attorney General of Oklahoma
Appellee
Lee Optical of Oklahoma
Appellant's Claim
That an Oklahoma law, which prohibited persons other than licensed optometrists and ophthalmologists from fitting lenses for eyeglasses, did not constitute a violation of the Due Process Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
Chief Lawyer for Appellant
James C. Harkin, Assistant Attorney General of Oklahoma
Chief Lawyer for Appellee
Dick H. Woods
Justices for the Court
Hugo Lafayette Black, Harold Burton, Tom C. Clark, William O. Douglas (writing for the Court), Felix Frankfurter, Sherman Minton, Stanley Forman Reed, Earl Warren
Justices Dissenting
None (John Marshall Harlan II did not participate)
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
28 March 1955
Decision
Upheld the power of the legislatures to make state laws regulating business,and declared that "The day is gone when this Court uses the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to strike down state laws . .. "
Significance
Williamson v. Lee Optical was one of several cases marking the death knell of "substantive due process." Starting with the New Deal under PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, the implementation of national economicpolicies had threatened the concept. In 1955, with Williamson v. Lee Optical, the Court was in the midst of a paradigm shift in its views on that concept: gone were the days, as Justice Douglas said, when the Court would usesubstantive due process on behalf of businesspeople such as the appellee inthis case; but a day was just dawning when the concept would be applied in favor of other constituencies.
A Vision Problem in Oklahoma
Although it would ultimately involve lofty constitutional ideas, Williamson v. Lee Optical arose from a simple and practical set of needs concerning the sale of eyeglasses. Foremost among these, from the perspective of consumers, was the desire to have the fastest, easiest, and cheapest service in fitting a pair of glasses. Such service would likely come from an optician, which the Court would later define as "an artisan qualified to grind lenses, fill prescription, and fit frames." The services of such a practitioner would undoubtedly be cheaper than those of an ophthalmologist, "a duly licensed physician who specializes in the care of eyes"; or of an optometrist, a doctor who"examines eyes for refractive error, recognizes (but does not treat) diseases of the eye, and fills prescriptions for eyeglasses." Whereas an optician would have only the training necessary to carry out his or her fairly limited tasks, the optometrist or ophthalmologist would have the education of a medical doctor, making him or her more than qualified to fit a pair of glasses fora patient--and he or she would most likely charge accordingly.
The question revolved around the right of the state of Oklahoma to prohibit the sale of lenses fitted by an optician. The answer lay in Title 59 of the Oklahoma state laws, Section 2 of which stated in part:
It shall beunlawful for any person, firm, corporation, company, or partnership not licensed under the provisions of Chapter 11 or Chapter 13 of Title 59, Oklahoma Statutes 1951, to fit, adjust, adapt, or to in any manner apply lenses, frames, prisms, or any other optical appliances to the face of a person . . .
These were only the opening words, but the point was clearly established: since Chapter 11 provided for the licensing of ophthalmologists, and Chapter 13of optometrists, opticians were effectively kept out of the lens-fitting business in Oklahoma. To opticians, this exclusion seemed particularly unfair, given the existence of retail establishments selling ready-to-wear glasses. Similarly questionable, from the view of the opticians, were provisions making it illegal for them to advertise, or for anyone to rent retail space to any person "purporting to do eye examination or visual care."
Lee Optical filed a suit in district court, charging that these laws were unconstitutional. The three judges of the district court agreed on most counts.Specifically, under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, theydeclared unconstitutional the provision in the Oklahoma statute making it unlawful for anyone who was not a licensed optometrist or ophthalmologist to fitlenses, or to duplicate or replace lenses, except under the written authority of an ophthalmologist or optometrist licensed in Oklahoma. While it was within the power of a state to regulate something as vital as eye examination, the district court held, the requirement in question was not "reasonably and rationally related to the health and welfare of the people." The district court similarly declared unconstitutional most other provisions in the Oklahoma statute, including the prohibition against advertising, with the exception ofa portion of Section 3 which made it unlawful to "solicit the sale of spectacles, eye glasses, lenses, frames," etc.
The state of Oklahoma, in the person of Attorney General Mac Q. Williamson, appealed. By the time it came before the Supreme Court, the case had been split into two parts: Williamson v. Lee Optical, designated as No. 184 bythe Court, in which Oklahoma challenged the lower court's ruling of its lawsas unconstitutional; and the case of Lee Optical v. Williamson (No. 185), a subordinate legal action challenging the lower court's declaration thatthe prohibition against soliciting the sale of eyeglasses was indeed constitutional. Along the way to the Supreme Court, both sides attracted national attention from professional associations relating to eye care, and from states.While Dick H. Woods argued for Lee Optical in both 184 and 185, by special leave of the Court, Herbert A. Bergson argued for the Guild of Prescription Opticians as amici curiae in 184. Similarly, whereas Oklahoma's assistant attorney general, James C. Harkin, represented his state as appellant in 184 and appellee in 185, Philip Perlman argued for the American Optometric Association as amicus curiae. Joining Oklahoma and the Optometric Association in urging reversal in 184 and affirmation in 185 were the states of Arkansas, California, and Mississippi.
Substantive Due Process: From Slaughterhouse to Optician's Shop
At issue in Williamson was the principle of Substantive Due Process, aconcept which made its first appearance in the famous Slaughterhouse Cases (1873). The latter cases challenged a state monopoly on slaughterhousesin Louisiana, and were brought by a group of butchers who argued that the policy prevented them from practicing their trade. At that time, Justice JosephP. Bradley stated that "a law which prohibits a large class of citizens fromadopting . . . or from following a lawful employment . . . does deprive themof liberty as well as property, without due process of law." The case of Munn v. Illinois (1877) was another commerce-related legal action which touched on the question of due process. Had the grain storage facilities at issue in the case not been "affected with a public interest," the Court suggested, it might have given the case closer scrutiny in light of due process.
Such scrutiny finally came, through a long series of steps, with the Court'slandmark ruling in Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway Company v. theState of Minnesota (1890). This time the Court declared a state economiclaw unconstitutional, and identified the courts of the land, not the state legislatures, as the bodies which should have final say in matters involving business rates. The ruling centered around the question of Due Process, which is guaranteed in Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privilegesor immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor denyto any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
The ruling in this case found that as a corporate "person," the Chicago, Milwaukee and Saint Paul Railroad was entitled to protection of its rights underthe Due Process clause.
Hence in a great irony, the Fourteenth Amendment, passed by Congress following the Civil War with the aim of protecting the rights of freed slaves, instead saw its primary application in service to corporations. In a series of rulings throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth, the Court upheld corporations' "freedom of contract," and ruled against laws setting minimum wages or maximum daily working hours. The tide of substantive due process in favor of corporations continued for more than a generation, until it was stopped by the Depression and the New Deal programs initiated in the 1930s.
In its 1934 ruling in Nebbia v. New York, the Court began to distanceitself from its earlier stance, declaring that a state could regulate milk prices whether or not the milk industry could be judged as one "affected with public interest." As for its role of protecting business from the encroachments of state government, the Court declared that it was no longer a "super-legislature." With the liberal President Franklin D. Roosevelt ascendant, the Court began going back on its earlier pro-business activism, and in 1941 JusticeDouglas wrote for the unanimous Court in Olsen v. Nebraska that "We are not concerned . . . with the wisdom, need, or appropriateness" of a statelaw regulating employment agency fees. Such questions, Douglas wrote, "suggest a choice which should be left where . . . it was left by the Constitution--to the states and to Congress."
"The Day Is Gone . . . "
Fourteen years later, in Williamson v. Lee Optical, Douglas deliveredthe opinion for a once again unanimous Court of eight judges. (Justice John Marshall Harlan II, recently sworn in, took no part in the proceedings.) The Court reversed in part and affirmed in part, but none of its rulings favored Lee Optical or the Guild of Prescription Opticians: rather, the Court's rulingreversed those parts of the district court judgment which overturned Oklahoma law, and affirmed the lower court's ruling that the law prohibiting solicitation of the sale of lenses was constitutional. As he had earlier done in Olsen, Douglas made it clear that the Court was not interested in evaluating the state law from the standpoint of logic, reason, or common sense: "TheOklahoma law," he wrote, "may exact a needless, wasteful requirement in manycases." Regardless of this distinct possibility, however, "it is for the legislature, not the courts, to balance the advantages and disadvantages of thenew requirement." Furthermore, "the present law does not require a new examination of the eyes every time the frames are changed or the lenses duplicated.For if the old prescription is on file with the opticians, he can go ahead and make the new fitting or duplicate the lenses." But again, "the law need not be in every respect logically consistent with its aims to be constitutional. It is enough that there is an evil at hand for correction, and that it might be thought that the particular legislative measure was a rational way to correct it."
What was at question, instead, was due process, and here too Justice Douglasmade quick work of the opticians' case: in perhaps the most famous sentence of his ruling in this case, Douglas announced that
The day is gone when this Court uses the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to strike down state laws, regulatory of business or industrial conditions, because they may be unwise, improvident, or out of harmony with a particular school of thought.
As for the specific due process questions at issue in Williamson, Douglas wrote that these were "answered in principle" by Roschen v. Ward (1929), in which the Court upheld a New York law preventing the sale of eyeglasses at a retail outlet without the supervision of a licensed physician or optometrist. The Court at that time had placed its confidence in professionalsto uphold the intent of the law: " . . . wherever the requirements of the Actstop, there can be no doubt that the presence and superintendence of the specialist tend to diminish an evil."
Thus the Court dealt with the first portion of the Oklahoma law in question,the part of Section 2 that prevented persons other than licensed optometristsor ophthalmologists from fitting, duplicating, or replacing lenses. Douglasthen proceeded to examine the various other claims at issue. With regard to the apparent inequity in the state's exempting retailers of ready-to-wear glasses from its regulations, the Court left that decision up to the state: "Thelegislature may select one phase of one field and apply a remedy there, neglecting the others . . . " Besides, "The prohibition of the Equal Protection Clause goes no further than the invidious discrimination. We cannot say that that point has been reached here. For all this record shows, the ready-to-wearbranch of this business may not loom large in Oklahoma . . . "
As for the prohibition against renting retail space for the purposes of doingeye examination, this was "on the same constitutional footing as the denialto corporations of the right to practice general dentistry." In both situations, the aim was "an attempt to free the profession . . . from all taints of commercialism." The Oklahoma law prohibiting business from soliciting the saleof frames, mountings, and "other optical appliances," the Court held, was likewise constitutional: "An eyeglass frame, considered in isolation, is only apiece of merchandise. But an eyeglass frame is not used in isolation . . . it is used with lenses, and lenses, pertaining as they do to the human eye, enter the field of health." Therefore "we see no constitutional reason why a State may not treat all who deal with the human eye as members of a professionwho should use no merchandising methods for obtaining customers." Given thisstatement, the ruling in 185, regarding the prohibition of soliciting sale oflenses, etc., was obvious. Affirming in part and reversing in part, the Court upheld the constitutionality of all aspects of the Oklahoma law.
Impact
It is interesting to note that both Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) andRoe v. Wade (1973) make mention of Williamson in several places. These two cases, the former involving birth control and the latter abortion, were landmarks not only with regard to personal freedom in sexual matters,but in their "new" application of due process. Williamson, while seemingly striking the final blow against due process in its business application, came at a time when the concept was finding new life in relation to privacyand personal freedom. Starting with Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942), the Court had begun to apply due process to individual rights, and by the time ofGriswold, a decade after Williamson, that concept was established. But conservatives were just as wary of the application of due process topersonal issues as liberals had been of its uses in favor of business: Justice Black in Griswold warned that due process was "no less dangerous when used to enforce this Court's views about personal rights than those about economic rights." Justice William H. Rehnquist, in his dissent from the Roev. Wade decision, made a similar point. In the end, Williamson can be seen as a milestone marking the end of one era with regard to due process, and the beginnings of another.
Related Cases
- The Slaughterhouse Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1873).
- Munn v. Illinois, 94 U.S. 113, 134 (1877).
- Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway Company v. the State of Minnesota, 134 U.S. 418 (1890).
- Roschen v. Ward, 279 U.S. 337 (1929).
- Nebbia v. New York, 291 U.S. 502 (1934).
- Olsen v. Nebraska, 313 U.S. 236 (1941).
- Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535 (1942).
- Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965).
- Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).
Substantive Due Process
Due process of law, guaranteed by the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments to theU.S. Constitution, demands fairness for individuals in legal procedures applied by federal and state governments, respectively. Due process judicial deliberations involve both substantive and procedural dimensions. Whereas procedural due process looks at the manner in which individual rights are protected from governmental arbitrary actions such as right to an attorney or freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, substantive due process addresses the actual subject matter being regulated in a law or regulation, particularly personal rights or liberties.
By the 1990s, substantive due process court decisions had addressed most fundamental liberties expressly found in the first ten amendments as well as liberties not specifically described. Such unspoken liberties include the right to privacy in matters of personal choice--marriage, sexual concerns, parenthood, abortion, or "right to die" issues. The Supreme Court found the guaranteeof these liberties embedded in various aspects of U.S. legal history including common law, moral philosophy, equal protection, and court precedents. The Court would sustain state or federal regulation restricting fundamental liberties only if the government could demonstrate a compelling reason in the public interest.
Sources
Keynes, Edward. Liberty, Property, and Privacy: Toward a Jurisprudence ofSubstantive Due Process. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996.
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