Although the question of constitutional personhood is almost always a fundamental component of the cases brought before the Supreme Court, the Court has never directly answered the question: who is considered a "person" for the purposes of constitutional rights. Moreover, the Court's lack of clear answers about constitutional personhood raises more questions about the scope of rights in the United States: Why are corporations. She argues that there is a great need for reform in the Court's handling of constitutional personality claims and she pleads for a defined approach moving forward.
Indeed, the Supreme Court is routinely called upon to decide a person's constitutional status, and an analysis of the Court's past decisions highlights the need for a more defined, transparent understanding of personhood as provided for in the Constitution. Thus, the question of constitutional personality necessarily serves as the basis of any constitutional claim brought before the Court.
Case Studies and Analysis
Aliens
Immigration scholar Linda Bosniak looks at the 31 Court's constitutional personality jurisprudence and notes that while the Court has never. Her work is critical of the idea of constitutional personhood, explaining that the concept "promises much more than it can deliver." United States argued that the statute requiring aliens unlawfully present in the United States to be "in prison at hard labor for a period not exceeding one year" violated the provisions of the Fifth and Sixth.
Fairman examines the impact of the "segregation cases" on the public and on the future of the Supreme Court, and he highlights the main criticisms of the court's ruling against segregation. However, the Court has not always sided with the plaintiff seeking constitutional personhood and protection. United States, the Court ruled that the application of curfews against a specific group of people was constitutional when the United States was at war with the country from which that group originated.
Gordon Hirabayashi, who was found guilty of violating the curfew, appealed to the Supreme Court, where the Court upheld the curfew. 48 Eisentrager introduced an idea that would govern future alien constitutional personhood cases, that a person's involvement in the political community of the United States (or lack thereof) could determine his or her eligibility to claim rights protection under the Constitution. Chief Justice Rehnquist's opinion argued that "the people" the Fourth Amendment was intended to protect were "the people of the United States" and that Verdugo-Urquidez's.
With this decision, the Court effectively endorsed a reading of the Constitution in which "the people" can be interpreted as "members of a political community" or as "the citizens."52 United States v.
Children
In 1967, the Court ruled that juveniles accused of crimes must have the same due process rights as adults guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment, including the right to timely notice of the charges, the right to confrontation. The court did not make a transcript of the hearings, and the witnesses who testified were not sworn. The Iowa Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU took the case all the way to the Supreme Court, where the court ruled that the school administrators had not demonstrated a valid reason for this regulation of free speech.
While the Supreme Court has generally viewed children as constitutional persons for the purposes of First Amendment protections, the Court has not always affirmed the constitutional personhood of children. Here, the Court addressed constitutional personhood as it relates to students in public schools and the Eighth Amendment's protection against cruel and unusual punishment. When taken to the Supreme Court, the Court's decision 76 required consideration of the balance between an individual's right to privacy and the school's interest in maintaining order and discipline; the court ultimately found that the school had "reasonable suspicion" that T.L.O. to search his wallet, and that the drug-related evidence was in "plain view".
The Court's decisions regarding children (or more specifically, students) in schools highlight an entire area of jurisprudence where the constitutional personality of the student is diminished in a way that would not otherwise be the case for adults or non-students . While the Court has traditionally interpreted cases involving schools and students in favor of the school, the approach to other cases involving children is different, especially when it comes to cases of abuse. The Court found that the Department of Social Services' actions did not violate Joshua DeShaney's due process rights, explaining that the DSS had no obligation to protect him from harm.
Blackmun's dissent serves as an important window into the Court's decision-making process 79; like many other dissenters, Blackmun explains the Court's error in his
Felons
Here, the Court considered Betty Simmons' status as a child and applied the Constitution in a manner that protected her constitutional personhood, denying Prince's claim against Massachusetts child labor laws. The constitutional personhood of children is largely situational as interpreted by the Court, but generally the Court has not upheld the constitutional personhood of children except for the same protections afforded to adults in court (ie , etc.). Criminal disenfranchisement legislation actually has a 83 long history and is based on the idea that "those who break the rules of society should not be allowed to help set them." As Christopher Uggen, a professor at the University of Minnesota 84 explains, "The message that gets across to them is: Yes, you have all the responsibilities of a citizen now, but you're basically still a second-class citizen because we're not giving you the opportunity to to be engaged in the political process." While many states have amended their felon 85 voting rights laws, felons often bring constitutional personhood claims before the Court, predominantly asserting the right to vote as citizens protected by the Constitution, and the Court has consistently held that felon disenfranchisement laws are not in contrary to the constitution.
Here, the court ruled that suspicionless searches of 89 parolees were legal under California law and that the search at issue was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment because it was not "arbitrary, capricious, or vexatious." The same 90. Knights, where the court also held that a condition of release does not afford a released prisoner the full expectation of privacy generally afforded to constitutional persons under the Fourth Amendment. An analysis of the Court's jurisprudence regarding these three groups of persons (foreigners, children, criminals) provides a clearer picture of how the Court deals with constitutional issues.
A child applicant's success in asserting constitutional personhood necessarily depends on the child's age and whether or not the child sues his or her school, in which case the court historically favors the school over the child's personhood. Here, the Court holds that the prior act of committing a crime is sufficient to remove constitutional protections that had previously undoubtedly been afforded. More generally, the claims of aliens, children, and felons demonstrate that the Court has not yet considered constitutional personhood as a general entity for which a constitutional framework is required.
If the Court continues in its practice of individualized, status-based analysis of claims, the law and precedent will become increasingly complex, disjointed, and impossible to understand as a single body of law.
Future Jurisprudence
In the flurry of legal challenges facing Trump's immigration order, plaintiffs argue that the government cannot act arbitrarily or without supporting evidence, arguing that the government failed to provide evidence that citizens of the targeted countries constituted a unique threat to the United States. With no firm basis for understanding the constitutional personhood of aliens and immigrants, and no basis for determining their constitutional rights, the future of immigration policy and restrictions on entry into the United States rests in the hands of public opinion. 34;Felon voting has a greater impact on elections than voter ID laws | Harry J Either."
If felons had been able to vote in the 2000 election (and in all other elections for that matter), American history might be different. Taking into account the real, far-reaching consequences of the Supreme Court's jurisprudence on constitutional personality, a uniform framework going forward is necessary to prevent continued disenfranchisement, political confusion, and dilution of constitutional rights for specific groups of persons. Across all three categories of claimants, the predominant discrepancy in the Court's decision-making has been a change in initial focus: in some cases the Court focuses on the right claimed rather than on the person claiming it , and in other cases just the opposite. .
For constitutional legitimacy and for the legitimacy of the Supreme Court itself in the future, the Court must adopt an approach that can be easily understood and referenced for future cases involving constitutional personality claims. In modern discussions of constitutional personhood, a legitimate Supreme Court with a functional decision-making rationale is essential to the continued success of the democratic republic. Convention on the Rights of the Child, G.A. 34; Criminal Forfeiture Laws Across the United States | Brennan Center for Justice.”
Winnebago County Department of Social Services, 489 U.S. Freedom of Expression in the Supreme Court Defining Cases. Harvard Law Review Vol. https://www.jstor.org/stable/. First National Bank of Boston vs. Gerstein, Josh and Seung Min Kim, Sarah Wheaton and Nick Gass, Edward-Isaac Dovere and Seung Min Kim, Malcolm Burnley, Zack Kopplin, Timothy Stoltzfus Jost and John A. 34; Supreme Court Blockade on Immigration Threatens 'Dreamers,' Too." POLITICO. Military warrant—detention, treatment and trial of some noncitizens in war on terror.
