Overcoming Lochner in the Twenty-First Century: Taking Both Rights and Popular Sovereignty Seriously as We Seek to Secure Equal Citizenship and Promote the Public Good

Abstract:     
Professor McAffee reviews substantive due process as the textual basis for modern fundamental rights constitutional decision-making. He contends that we should avoid both the undue literalism that rejects the idea of implied rights, as well as the attempt to substitute someone's preferred moral vision for the limits, and compromises, that are implicit in - and intended by - the Constitution's text. He argues, moreover, that we can largely harmonize the various goals of our constitutional system by taking rights seriously and by understanding that securing rights does not exhaust the Constitution's purposes.

Keywords: Lochner, soveignty, rights, equal citizenship, pulic good

JEL Classifications: K10, K19, K20, K40

Accepted Paper Series