The Supreme Court of the 1960s

The Double Standard.

As the decade of the 1960s opened, the U.S. Supreme Court was weighted on the side of liberal judicial activism. In virtually all matters that came before it, the entire Court adhered to the jurisprudential principle which legal scholars call the "Double Standard." Based on a series of cases from the late 1930s, this approach makes a sharp distinction between property rights and personal rights. In the former area, the Constitution is held to allow wide leeway to legislative interference in business and commercial matters. In contrast, government infringements on personal rights protected by the Constitution, such as privacy or free speech, are much more strictly scrutinized. More-over, Chief Justice Earl Warren and three of the associate justices—Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, and William J. Brennan, jr.—were strongly committed to judicial activism. In cases where they felt individual rights were being...

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