Privacy rights

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By David H. Gans, Director of the Human Rights, Civil Rights, and Citizenship Program at the Constitutional Accountability Center. He is the lead author of the report, The Gem of the Constitution: the Text and History of the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and co-author of CAC's brief in McDonald. This article is cross-posted at CAC's blog, Text & History.

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On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in McDonald v. City of Chicago, which raises the question whether the Second Amendment's guarantee of a right to bear arms applies to states and local governments. Going into argument, incorporation of the Second Amendment right seemed a given - after all, states already have to obey virtually every right in the Bill of Rights. The critical question was whether the Court would breathe new life into the Privileges or Immunities Clause, and honor the part of the Fourteenth Amendment's text that clearly protects substantive fundamental rights from state infringement.

The Privileges or Immunities Clause was intended to be the centerpiece of the Fourteenth Amendment, but it was written out of the Constitution by the Supreme Court in the 1873 Slaughter-House Cases. The decision has been regarded as one of the worst in the Court's history, and roundly condemned by the Amendment's framers in the 1870s, Justice Harlan in the early 20th century, and Justice Black in the 1940s. The overwhelming consensus among scholars across the ideological spectrum - reflected in a law professors' brief filed by CAC in McDonald - is that Slaughter-House obliterated the text and history of the Clause through a profoundly incorrect interpretation of the Constitution.

Unfortunately, the Privileges or Immunities Clause received a chilly reception from the Court on Tuesday, especially from those Justices who most profess to take the Constitution's text and history seriously. Justice Scalia belittled the Clause, accusing Alan Gura, McDonald's attorney, of "bucking for some place on some law school faculty" by advancing an argument that was "the darling of the professoriate." Scalia, supposedly the Court's chief originalist, wouldn't even consider the merits of the argument. Chief Justice Roberts, too, refused to follow the Constitution's text and history where it leads. He explicitly worried that the Privileges or Immunities Clause would allow for broad protections of substantive liberty; he preferred to rely on the Due Process Clause, since that text is about process, and does not easily lend itself to protecting substantive fundamental rights. While Roberts and Scalia were content to rely on substantive due process to protect gun rights, they seemed to want to reserve the opportunity to bash the doctrine in future cases involving rights they don't recognize. Other Justices were less overtly hostile, but none seemed willing to revive the Clause.

In light of its reception at the Court, was Gura too bold?

On January 28, 1916 President Woodrow Wilson nominated Louis D. Brandeis, a Boston lawyer and coauthor of a Harvard law Review article advancing the right to privacy, to the U.S. Supreme Court. In a brief piece for the ABA Journal, George Hodak notes that it took the Senate until June to confirm the nomination, making Brandeis the high court's first Jewish member.

Hodak writes:

Although he was widely revered for his commitment to public service, which earned him the title ‘the people's lawyer,' Brandeis had his share of critics, particularly within business circles. Resistance from those quarters coupled with a somewhat veiled anti-Semitism, made for a prolonged and contentious confirmation process.

In the fall, ACS hosted a national event exploring Brandeis's trailblazing legal career, especially in the area of privacy law. The event featured Melvin I. Urofsky, author of the biography, Louis D. Brandeis: A Life. Video of the event is here. Following the event, Urofsky talked with ACSblog about his book and said Brandeis, who served as an associated justice on the high court for 23 years, is "on almost everyone's list of the top three justices in our history." Brandeis, Urofsky continued, helped to advance an especially resilient notion of privacy rights. See Urofsky's interview here. 

[image via hawaiilibertychronicles.com]