The Nationalization of Civil Liberties, Revisited

Abstract

In 1967 Professor Herbert Wechsler delivered a lecture examining the then-increasing role of the Supreme Court and Congress in defining the rights of the citizens of the states. More than thirty years later, Professor Gerald Neuman revisited this subject in an inaugural lecture as Columbia's first Herbert Wechsler Professor of Federal Jurisprudence. Neuman finds that the Supreme Court has slowed the expansion of constitutional rights and that three recent decisions have circumscribed Congressional power to create statutory rights under the Commerce Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment. He argues that these decisions do not necessarily impede the legitimate use of other govemmental powers to confer statutory rights, and that the power of Congress to implement treaties may become a more impor? tant basis for the enactment of legislation that protects individual rights be? yond those recognized in U.S. constitutional doctrine.