Opinion ID: 2264443
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Analysis Under Article 7

Text: The language and history of the Common Benefits Clause thus reinforce the conclusion that a relatively uniform standard, reflective of the inclusionary principle at its core, must govern our analysis of laws challenged under the Clause. Accordingly, we conclude that this approach, rather than the rigid, multi-tiered analysis evolved by the federal courts under the Fourteenth Amendment, shall direct our inquiry under Article 7. As noted, Article 7 is intended to ensure that the benefits and protections conferred by the state are for the common benefit of the community and are not for the advantage of persons who are a part only of that community. When a statute is challenged under Article 7, we first define that part of the community disadvantaged by the law. We examine the statutory basis that distinguishes those protected by the law from those excluded from the state's protection. Our concern here is with delineating, not with labelling the excluded class as suspect, quasi-suspect, or non-suspect for purposes of determining different levels of judicial scrutiny. [10] We look next to the government's purpose in drawing a classification that includes some members of the community within the scope of the challenged law but excludes others. Consistent with Article 7's guiding principle of affording the protection and benefit of the law to all members of the Vermont community, we examine the nature of the classification to determine whether it is reasonably necessary to accomplish the State's claimed objectives. We must ultimately ascertain whether the omission of a part of the community from the benefit, protection and security of the challenged law bears a reasonable and just relation to the governmental purpose. Consistent with the core presumption of inclusion, factors to be considered in this determination may include: (1) the significance of the benefits and protections of the challenged law; (2) whether the omission of members of the community from the benefits and protections of the challenged law promotes the government's stated goals; and (3) whether the classification is significantly underinclusive or overinclusive. As Justice Souter has observed in a different context, this approach necessarily calls for a court to assess the relative `weights' or dignities of the contending interests. Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 767, 117 S.Ct. 2258, 138 L.Ed.2d 772 (1997) (Souter, J., concurring). What keeps that assessment grounded and objective, and not based upon the private sensitivities or values of individual judges, is that in assessing the relative weights of competing interests courts must look to the history and `traditions from which [the State] developed' as well as those `from which it broke,' id. at 767, 117 S.Ct. 2258 (quoting Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497, 542, 81 S.Ct. 1752, 6 L.Ed.2d 989 (1961) (Harlan, J., dissenting)), and not to merely personal notions. Moreover, the process of review is necessarily one of close criticism going to the details of the opposing interests and to their relationships with the historically recognized principles that lend them weight or value. Id. at 769, 117 S.Ct. 2258 (emphasis added). [11] Ultimately, the answers to these questions, however useful, cannot substitute for `[t]he inescapable fact ... that adjudication of ... claims may call upon the Court in interpreting the Constitution to exercise that same capacity which by tradition courts always have exercised: reasoned judgment.' Id. (quoting Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 849, 112 S.Ct. 2791, 120 L.Ed.2d 674 (1992)). The balance between individual liberty and organized society which courts are continually called upon to weigh does not lend itself to the precision of a scale. It is, indeed, a recognition of the imprecision of reasoned judgment that compels both judicial restraint and respect for tradition in constitutional interpretation. [12]