Law Outlines Constitutional Law (Duke Adler) Outlines
Professor Adler's Constitutional Law outline...
The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our Constitutional Law (Duke Adler) Outlines. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:
EP governs: statutes, rules, unwritten policy, specific administrative decision or enforcement
For State: 14A EP
For FG: The constitutional basis is that SC, through reverse incorporation, found an implicit EP component in 5A (Bolling v. Sharpe)
RBR is the minimal level of scrutiny that all government actions challenged under EP must meet. A law meets RBR if it is rationally related to a legitimate government purpose. For fear of re-Lochnerizing, SC is very deferential in applying RBR. A law is upheld if it’s possible to conceive any legitimate purpose of the law.
Rationale for RBR: Basic equality: same treatment for similarly situated people in light of the totality of legitimate government goals
Over/ under inclusive analysis: The law is neither overinclusive OI nor underinclusive UI in light of the totality legitimate government goals. Under the rational basis test the court will usually tolerate laws that are OI or UI.
Over-inclusive: includes people who should not be burdened
Under-inclusive: leaves out people who in fact do threaten the state’s goal
Cost-benefit analysis
Goals of reducing administrative costs/ substantive costs
Multiple governmental goals
Cases where SC rejected EP- RBR challenges and uphold the laws
Railway Express: no vehicle advertisement except the owner
Minnesota v. Clover Leaf: bars plastic, not paper, non-returnable containers
Fitzgerald: Higher tax on slot machines on racetracks than riverboats
Williamson: opticians may not prepare lenses without prescription
Armour: rebate for future lump sum assessment not already paid
Cases where SC rejected the laws under RBR
Cleburne
Moreno
Romer
Legitimate goals:
Needs
Health/safety/ public morals (Railway express agency)
environmental goals
Entitlement/desert
Illegitimate goals:
Bare desire to harm a particular group (Moreno)
Fear of a particular group
Possible rationale for racial suspect classification
Anti-subordination theory: laws that discriminate along racial lines tend to exacerbate racial subordination in history.
Immutability
Prejudice
Stigma theory: stigmatize people as being inferior
Race is unlikely to be relevant
Political process theory: correct past mistakes through the political process
Level of scrutiny for suspect class:
Formalistic: SS for all racial classifications that Korematsu adopted – current approach
Fact-specific approach: Brown, Strauder, Plessy
Racial classification based on common physical characteristics, culture, ancestry, or social recognition
African American (many cases)
Chinese ethnicity (Yick Wo)
Japanese ethnicity (Korematsu)
Hispanic ethnicity
Ancestry classification in Rice
Several kinds of law
RBR
Laws that are facially neutral and merely have racial disparate impact only get RBR (Davis)
Simple enactment of anti-discrimination measures gets RBR. Repealing such measures also gets RBR.
no race discrimination going forward in hiring – RBR
give preference to anyone who can show that he was discriminated before. – RBR
BUT: give preference to black applicants until the percentage is 30%. – SS
SS
Facially neutral law motivated by subjective racially discriminatory purpose in the Feeney sense (specific intent, not merely knowledge) gets SS.
Discriminatory purpose can be shown through direct or circumstantial evidence, including disparate impact.
But for causation: if the decision maker didn’t have the discriminatory purpose in the Feeney sense, the decision being challenged would be different.
Substantial factor: in mixed motivation cases, if same result would have occurred then that is not but for and not a strict scrutiny case...
Buy the full version of these notes or essay plans and more in our Constitutional Law (Duke Adler) Outlines.
Professor Adler's Constitutional Law outline...
Ask questions 🙋 Get answers 📔 It's simple 👁️👄👁️
Our AI is educated by the highest scoring students across all subjects and schools. Join hundreds of your peers today.
Get Started