Posted on 03/28/2012 5:41:53 PM PDT by SmithL
NASHVILLE - Ali Bokhari, now 39, emigrated from Pakistan in 2000 and eventually settled here as a taxi driver. He soon experienced a quintessentially American itch, a nagging sense that “I cannot grow.” But he had an idea: “I can build a better business model for something Nashville has been missing.” He built it and now knows that no good deed goes unpunished by today’s political model — collusion between entrenched businesses and compliant government.
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Represented by the Austin office of the Institute for Justice, the nation’s only libertarian public interest law firm, Bokhari is seeking judicial recognition of his constitutional right to economic liberty. Since the New Deal, courts, with no textual or any other constitutional basis, have distinguished between economic and non-economic liberty. Giving the former scant protection, courts have permitted any government infringement of it that can be said to have a “rational basis.” This absurdly permissive test has produced a charade of judging — a dereliction of the judicial duty to protect liberty. The courts’ dereliction of duty has been presented as noble deference to popular government.
But the Constitution, and especially the 14th Amendment, is supposed to protect the individual’s liberty, including economic liberty, from government’s depredations. One purpose of that amendment’s protection of “the privileges or immunities” of U.S. citizenship was to defend the economic liberties of freed slaves from laws restricting entry into trades and businesses — laws written to insulate white Southern businessmen from competition. But the amendment protects all the “privileges or immunities” of all Americans.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Excellent article! Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have two major court cases limiting GOVERNMENT for a change? Obamacare being struck down & this case decided favorably to Mr. Bokhari would make our rulers stop & think for a moment, at least.
Cool Photoshop.
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