NCJ Number
118228
Journal
Washington and Lee Law Review Volume: 45 Issue: 1 Dated: (Winter 1988) Pages: 1-118
Date Published
1988
Length
118 pages
Annotation
This analysis of existing civil rights laws argues that they contain limits that are not rational or fair and that they will never be fully rational or completely fair until all persons are protected from arbitrary discrimination.
Abstract
The equal protection and due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution require rationality and fairness. However, the current civil rights laws protect only certain classes of individuals in limited situations. These laws are integral to a free society, but they are only a first step. Their limitations result from political and economic influences as well as from fear, ignorance, intolerance, apathy, misplaced paternalism, or complacence. In our constitutional system, all these reasons are beside the point. No sufficient principled base exists for recognizing an area of fundamental social importance, such as property or contract, and then limiting the protection from irrational discrimination to only certain classes. Discrimination based on characteristics that genuinely relate to the legitimate conduct of a given business, action, or project is not arbitrary or unlawful, however. Rights must be protected not because they contribute directly and materially to the general public welfare but because people belong to themselves, not to others nor to society as a whole. 381 footnotes.