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Constitutional Law

Translating Due Process, v1

What became known as economic due process gets its birth in a more general sense. The question these cases raise is whether there is an implicit line beyond which the government cannot go. The presumption of the conservatives in these cases is that there is. That presumption is grounded in foundational theories of republican government. It is founded in a rich (if later) theory of free labor. Both values are increasingly threatened by an increasingly activist state (and federal) government. By the end of this section, we see the Court trying to translate these fundamental values by limiting the scope of governmental power. -LL