| Popis: |
This Article inteprets the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas case on the majority's own terms and in the context of the Court's struggle to justify judicial review for unenumerated substantive rights. It argues that Lawrence is just as much of a fundamental rights case as the Court's other cases recognized as fundamental rights cases (Cruzan, Casey, Roe). It gives an identity-centered interpretation of the Court's unenumerated substantive rights cases based on the majority's focus on autonomy, human dignity, and liberty. It argues that many of the current interpretations of Lawrence rely too much on Justice Scalia's flawed dissent. Justice Scalia interpreted Lawrence as both too weak in its level of protection and too braodly in its affect as 'the end of all morals legislation.This Article argues that Lawrence gives strong, needed and mostly uncontroversial protection to both homosexual and heterosexual persons from arbitrary government power. At the same time, it argues the Court will not take a broad interpretation of Lawrence, and thus Lawrence does not mean the end of state adultery laws. As for state fornications laws, these were very likely invalid prior Lawrence. Thus, Lawrence in no way means a substantial disruption to social morality or the integrity of the U.S. legal system.Method: This paper came about through a comprehensive reading of the scholarly literature on Lawrence, a search of every subsequent Supreme Court citation to Lawrence, and ideas generated and critiqued during the author's Craven Moot Court constitutional law competition. |
