Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf
Page Number: 50.0

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

11 

ROBERTS, C. J., dissenting 

U. S. 97, 105 (1934).

Allowing  unelected  federal  judges  to  select  which  un-
enumerated  rights  rank  as  “fundamental”—and  to  strike 
down state laws on the basis of that determination—raises 
obvious  concerns  about  the  judicial  role.    Our  precedents
have accordingly insisted that judges “exercise the utmost 
care”  in  identifying  implied  fundamental  rights,  “lest  the
liberty  protected  by  the  Due  Process  Clause  be  subtly
transformed into the policy preferences of the Members of 
this Court.”  Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U. S. 702, 720 
(1997)  (internal  quotation  marks  omitted);  see  Kennedy,
Unenumerated  Rights  and  the  Dictates  of  Judicial  Re-
straint 13 (1986) (Address at Stanford) (“One can conclude 
that certain essential, or fundamental, rights should exist
in  any  just  society.  It  does  not  follow  that  each  of  those 
essential rights is one that we as judges can enforce under 
the written Constitution.  The Due Process Clause is not a 
guarantee  of  every  right  that  should  inhere  in  an  ideal
system.”).

The need for restraint in administering the strong medi-
cine  of  substantive  due  process  is a  lesson  this  Court  has 
learned the hard way.  The Court first applied substantive
due process to strike down a statute in Dred Scott v. Sand-
ford, 19 How. 393 (1857).  There the Court invalidated the 
Missouri  Compromise  on  the  ground  that  legislation  re-
stricting  the  institution  of  slavery  violated  the  implied 
rights of slaveholders.  The Court relied on its own concep-
tion  of  liberty  and  property  in  doing  so.    It  asserted  that 
“an act of Congress which deprives a citizen of the United
States  of  his  liberty  or  property,  merely  because  he  came
himself or brought his property into a particular Territory
of the United States . . . could hardly be dignified with the
name of due process of law.”  Id., at 450.  In a dissent that 
has  outlasted  the  majority  opinion,  Justice  Curtis  ex-
plained that when the “fixed rules which govern the inter-
pretation  of  laws  [are]  abandoned,  and  the  theoretical