Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf
Page Number: 52

Cite as:  576 U. S. ____ (2015) 

13 

ROBERTS, C. J., dissenting 

ing them conflict with the Constitution.”  Id., at 75–76. 

In  the  decades  after  Lochner,  the  Court  struck  down 
nearly  200  laws  as  violations  of  individual  liberty,  often
over  strong  dissents  contending  that  “[t]he  criterion  of
constitutionality  is  not  whether  we  believe  the  law  to  be
for  the  public  good.”  Adkins  v.  Children’s  Hospital  of 
D. C., 261 U. S. 525, 570 (1923) (opinion of Holmes, J.).  By
empowering  judges  to  elevate  their  own  policy  judgments 
to  the  status  of  constitutionally  protected  “liberty,”  the 
Lochner  line  of  cases  left  “no  alternative  to  regarding  the 
court  as  a  . . .  legislative  chamber.”    L.  Hand,  The  Bill  of 
Rights 42 (1958).

Eventually,  the  Court  recognized  its  error  and  vowed
not to repeat it.  “The doctrine that . . . due process author-
izes courts to hold laws unconstitutional when they believe 
the  legislature  has  acted  unwisely,”  we  later  explained,
“has  long  since  been  discarded.    We  have  returned  to  the 
original  constitutional  proposition  that  courts  do  not 
substitute  their  social  and  economic  beliefs  for  the  judg-
ment  of  legislative  bodies,  who  are  elected  to  pass  laws.” 
Ferguson  v.  Skrupa,  372  U. S.  726,  730  (1963);  see  Day-
Brite Lighting, Inc. v. Missouri, 342 U. S. 421, 423 (1952) 
(“we do not sit as a super-legislature to weigh the wisdom
of legislation”).  Thus, it has become an accepted rule that 
the  Court  will  not  hold  laws  unconstitutional  simply  be-
cause  we  find  them  “unwise,  improvident,  or  out  of  har-
mony with a particular school of thought.”  Williamson v. 
Lee Optical of Okla., Inc., 348 U. S. 483, 488 (1955). 

Rejecting  Lochner  does  not  require  disavowing  the
doctrine of implied fundamental rights, and this Court has
not  done  so.  But  to  avoid  repeating  Lochner’s  error  of 
converting  personal  preferences  into  constitutional  man-
dates,  our  modern  substantive  due  process  cases  have
stressed  the  need  for  “judicial  self-restraint.”  Collins  v. 
Harker Heights, 503 U. S. 115, 125 (1992).  Our precedents
have  required  that  implied  fundamental  rights  be  “objec-