Fundamentally wrong about fundamental rights.

• Author: Winkler, Adam

INTRODUCTION

If there is one phrase that every student of constitutional law learns, it is that fundamental rights trigger strict scrutiny. As Justice William Brennan Jr. wrote, "a government practice or statute which restricts 'fundamental rights' or which contains 'suspect classifications' is to be subjected to 'strict scrutiny' and can be justified only if it furthers a compelling government purpose and, even then, only if no less restrictive alternative is available." (1) According to Justice Clarence Thomas, "strict scrutiny" is the "appropriate standard" for "infringements of fundamental rights." (2) Justice Antonin Scalia has recognized that "strict scrutiny will be applied to the deprivation of whatever sort of right we consider 'fundamental.'" (3)

There is one small problem with this well-worn adage. It is simply not true. Fundamental rights do not trigger strict scrutiny, at least not all of the time. In fact, strict scrutiny--a standard of review that asks if a challenged law is the least restrictive means of achieving compelling government objectives--is actually applied quite rarely in fundamental rights cases. Some fundamental rights trigger intermediate scrutiny, while others are protected only by reasonableness or rational basis review. Other fundamental rights are governed by categorical rules, with no formal "scrutiny" or standard of review whatsoever. In fact, only a small subset of fundamental rights triggers strict scrutiny--and even among those strict scrutiny is applied only occasionally. In short, the notion that government restrictions on fundamental rights are subject to strict scrutiny review is fundamentally wrong.

Part of the problem may be that the Supreme Court has never bothered to define with any precision what counts as a "fundamental right." There are at least three possible definitions. First, following footnote four of United States v. Carolene Products Co., (4) we might consider all of the individual rights guaranteed in the first eight amendments in the Bill of Rights to be fundamental. Second, we might alternatively view all of the provisions of the Bill of Rights that have been incorporated to apply against the states to be fundamental; the test for incorporation asks if a right is fundamental to American political institutions and our system of justice. Finally, we might define as fundamental those rights that have been thought of as "preferred rights" because of their role in promoting human dignity or democratic self-government. Any way you slice it, however, not all fundamental rights trigger strict scrutiny.

I consider each of these three definitions of fundamental rights and show that, regardless of the definition used, the old saying about strict scrutiny is descriptively wrong. Laws infringing upon fundamental rights are sometimes subject to strict scrutiny, but often they are not.

1. THE FUNDAMENTAL BILL OF RIGHTS

   Like so much of modern American constitutional law, the false notion that laws infringing upon fundamental rights are reviewed under strict scrutiny has roots in footnote four of Carolene Products. Justice Harlan Fiske Stone famously wrote, "There may be narrower scope for operation of the presumption of constitutionality when legislation appears on its face to be within a specific prohibition of the Constitution, such as those of the first ten amendments." (5) Ever since, constitutional law professors have taught their students that the individual rights guarantees found in the Bill of Rights trigger heightened review, while economic rights (such as those read into the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause by the Lochner Court) (6) receive only rational basis protection. And half of that lesson is true. But that half is the part about economic rights, not the part about heightened review for the rights spelled out in the text of the Bill of Rights.

   The Court has never purported to apply strict scrutiny in every provision of the Bill of Rights. Of the "first ten amendments" referred to in footnote four, a grand total of two trigger strict scrutiny. Laws invading on First Amendment rights of speech, association, and religious liberty are often subject to strict scrutiny, as are laws that restrict the due process and (invisible) equal protection guarantees of the Fifth Amendment. But strict scrutiny is nowhere to be found in the jurisprudence of the Second Amendment, the Third Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, the Sixth Amendment, the Seventh Amendment, the Eighth Amendment, the Ninth Amendment, or the Tenth Amendment. Two amendments trigger strict scrutiny; eight do not.

   Let us look at the Bill of Rights provisions a bit more closely. The Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms--or, more accurately, does not (7)--but in Second Amendment cases the Court will uphold challenged laws so long as they have a "reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia." (8) The Court has justified the lack of strict scrutiny here by suggesting that there are rights "far more fundamental" than those protected by the Second Amendment. (9)

   The Third Amendment, which protects against the quartering of troops in one's home, has never triggered strict scrutiny (or, for that matter, any other standard). As the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals recently noted, "Judicial interpretation of the Third Amendment is nearly nonexistent." (10) Should courts one day find reason to consider the Third Amendment, perhaps strict scrutiny will be adopted. To date, however, there has been no opinion in a Third Amendment case using that standard.

   Unlike the Third Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, barring unreasonable searches and seizures, has bred voluminous case law. Yet the Court does not apply strict scrutiny to governmental searches and seizures; it applies a reasonableness test. Of course, the reasonableness language comes from the text of the amendment itself. Still, the Court certainly could create substantive requirements of "reasonableness" that mimic strict scrutiny. For instance, the Court could hold that any search that is more overinclusive than necessary is constitutionally unreasonable, effectively adopting strict scrutiny's fit requirement. (11) But the Court has very clearly declared in recent years that such precision is not required. In Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton, the Court insisted, "We have repeatedly refused to declare that only the 'least intrusive' search practicable can be reasonable under the Fourth Amendment." (12) Searches and seizures are thus not strictly scrutinized.

   The Sixth Amendment right to counsel is not treated to strict scrutiny protection either. Indeed, in Sixth Amendment cases, we do not find any type of standard evocative of tiered scrutiny. Rather, the Court uses categorical rules to "implement" the right to counsel. For instance, the right is violated if the government refuses to provide a criminal defendant access to counsel after the defendant has asserted the right. (13) The courts do not ask what reasons the government had for the denial or whether the denial was narrowly tailored to achieve the government's ends. If the government violates the rule, the denial of counsel is unconstitutional.

   Categorical rules such as this could substitute for strict scrutiny if, in practice, they created the same heavy burden on the government to defend the constitutionality of the underlying state action. But in Sixth Amendment doctrine, the burden is on the individual, not the government, to show that he has been denied the right. And the substantive rules themselves--the...