Rights, Liberties, and Judicial Doctrines

• Author: Jack Fruchtman
• Profession: Professor of Political Science and Director of the Program in Law and American Civilization at Towson University, Maryland
• Pages: 209-223

American Constitutional History: A Brief Introduction, First Edition. Jack Fruchtman.

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Rights, Liberties, and Judicial

Doctrines

The contemporary republic also saw changes in the realm of civil rights

and liberties. These involved affirmative action, campaign financing,

gun ownership, capital punishment, privacy, and religion. In addition,

the contemporary republic witnessed the continued blossoming of the

doctrine of originalism in opinions by Antonin Scalia and Clarence

Thomas. Originalism holds that the only legitimate way to interpret

the Constitution was to determine the original understanding or

meaning of each provision at the time the drafters wrote and ratified it.

Its opposing ideology is the doctrine of the living constitution, which

promotes the idea that as times change, the duty of the Court is to

modify the meaning of constitutional provisions. Meantime, the

tension between these two interpretative approaches during this era

affected civil rights and liberties.

Affirmative Action and Education

The Court returned to affirmative action in public higher education in

2003 in two University of Michigan cases. The justices focused on the

admissions programs at the university’s undergraduate college and its

law school. The outcomes of the two cases were very different. Writing

for a six to three majority, Chief Justice Rehnquist found in Gratz v.

Bollinger that the undergraduate admissions program amounted to a