Doctrinal Development and Use
Early in American judicial history, various jurists attempted to form theories of natural rights and natural justice that would limit the power of government, especially regarding property and the rights of persons. Opposing "vested rights" were jurists who argued that the written constitution was the supreme law of the State and that judicial review could look only to that document — not to the "unwritten law" of "natural rights". Opponents further argued that the "police power" of government enabled legislatures to regulate the holding of property in the public interest, subject only to specific prohibitions of the written constitution.
Read more about this topic: Substantive Due Process
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“Such condition of suspended judgment indeed, in its more genial development and under felicitous culture, is but the expectation, the receptivity, of the faithful scholar, determined not to foreclose what is still a question—the “philosophic temper,” in short, for which a survival of query will be still the salt of truth, even in the most absolutely ascertained knowledge.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)