Title: Defending the Lifeworld: Substantive Due Process in the Taft Court Era
Abstract:This article studies the revival of substantive due process in the 1920s. In response to the massive augmentation of state managerial controls necessitated by World War I, the conservative Taft Court ...This article studies the revival of substantive due process in the 1920s. In response to the massive augmentation of state managerial controls necessitated by World War I, the conservative Taft Court sought to return constitutional law to the values of normalcy, which have been theorized by Habermas and others as values associated with a lifeworld. The Taft Court resisted the claims of systematic expertise championed by progressives, like Brandeis. It used the distinction between property affected with a public interest and ordinary property in order to effectuate this agenda. At root, the Taft Court sought to distinguish between a kind of law, exemplified by the common law, which it saw as internalized into the identities of citizens, and a kind of law, exemplified by progressive expertise, which it saw as externally imposed upon persons. The Taft Court sought to protect from managerial appropriation those aspects of personality deemed necessary for citizenship. The Court's substantive due process decisions were thus not merely about prohibiting class legislation, but they were also very much concerned with safeguarding spheres of life understood as prerequisites for the construction of independent citizens.Read More
Publication Year: 1998
Publication Date: 1998-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 12
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