Judicial Review of State Laws: The Meaning of the Privileges or Immunities Clause
Judicial Review of State Laws: The Meaning of the Privileges or Immunities Clause
This chapter examines the original meaning of the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in order to determine what stance federal courts should take toward state laws. The original Constitution contained several explicit restrictions on state power. In the early years of the Republic, federal courts actively scrutinized state enactments to ensure they did not violate these expressed prohibitions, especially the Contracts Clause. When it came to legislation not implicating these prohibitions, however, the courts deferred to states in their exercise of their police power. The chapter first considers what the term “privileges or immunities” encompasses before discussing the Supreme Court decision in the so-called Slaughter-House Cases, which set aside the original meaning of the Privileges or Immunities Clause. It then looks at the Due Process Clauses and shows that the due process of law includes judicial review.
Keywords: judicial review, Privileges or Immunities Clause, state laws, U.S. Constitution, state power, federal courts, Supreme Court, Slaughter-House Cases, Due Process Clauses, Fourteenth Amendment
Princeton Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
