Alexy, Robert. 2003. “Constitutional Rights, Balance and Rationality”. Ratio Juris 16 (June): 131-140. “Balancing act.” dictionary Merriam-Webster.com, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/balancing%20act. Retrieved 3 October 2022. These sample sentences are automatically selected from various online information sources to reflect the current use of the word “balancing act.” The opinions expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us your feedback. Balancing, which is often used to decide constitutional cases, is one of the two main methods of legal decision-making, the other being categorization or strict construction. Balance is about balancing competing rights with each other and analyzing the relative forces of many factors. A balancing decision depends on the circumstances of the individual case.
Therefore, the outcome is difficult to predict. Categorization, on the other hand, is a process of classification and labeling. It is a question of identifying a right and how it has been violated, and comparing these conclusions to a case or precedent already decided. Therefore, the result is more predictable. While the U.S. Supreme Court carefully considers its decisions when applying a balancing test to resolve high-profile or controversial issues before it, it is not the only court that solves problems by balancing competing interests at stake in a legal battle. Indeed, state and federal courts are asked every day to balance the competing interests of litigants to determine the admissibility of evidence, the adequacy of a judgment or the viability of an appeal. Justice O`Connor`s dissent in Acton reflected her strong endorsement of the balance between competing interests and the assessment of a law`s interference with individual rights. Ms. O`Connor expressed her belief that balancing is an essential step in the Court`s decision-making process in Employment Division, Department of Human Resources v.
Smith, 494 U.S. 872, 110 p. Ct. 1595, 108 L. ed. 2d 876 (1990). Respondents in Smith were Native Americans who were fired from their jobs because they ate peyote as part of a religious ceremony. The court ruled that the state could deny them unemployment benefits without violating the First Amendment`s free exercise clause.
O`Connor agreed with the outcome, but objected to the majority`s failure to consider the impact of the controversial law on the free exercise of religion. “For me,” O`Connor writes, “the most reasonable approach — the approach that is best consistent with our role as judges in deciding each case on its individual merits — is to apply [a] test in each case to determine whether the burden on the specific claimants before us is constitutionally significant and whether the respective burden … The interest that the State affirms before us is imperative. However, contrary to popular belief, the Court did not use balancing as the primary method of deciding constitutional cases. In fact, some of the most important constitutional cases of the twentieth century were decided without regard to competing interests. For example, balancing was not used in brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 p. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed.
873 (1954) (prohibition of separate public schools); gideon v. wainwright, 372U.S. 335, 83 p. Ct. 792, 9 L. Ed. 2d 799 (1963) (ensuring the appointment of destitute accused as defence counsel in criminal matters); and Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 pp. Ct. 1678, 14 L.
Ed. 2d 510 (1965) (prohibition of state laws prohibiting contraceptives). Balance can take one of two forms in cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. In the first case, the Court may measure competing interests and determine which one carries the most weight. For example, in New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747, 102 pp. Ct. 3348, 73 L. Ed. 2d 1113 (1982), the court upheld a law criminalizing the distribution of child pornography because the evil eliminated by the law far outweighed any violation of the interests of freedom of expression.
In the second form of balancing, the Court seeks to find a “balance” between competing interests. In Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 105 p. Ct. 1694, 85 L. Ed. 2d 1 (1985), the court held that a police officer may use lethal force to arrest a fugitive criminal if he or she has probable reason to believe that the suspect poses a threat to others. In Garner, the Court did not find that one interest clearly outweighed the other. Instead, the state`s interest in law enforcement and the individual`s interest in being free from harm were weighed and duly recognized in the analysis.
Compromise was first used by the U.S. Supreme Court as one of its primary methods of legal analysis in the late 1930s and early 1940s, when the judiciary began rejecting the rigid formalism and mechanical jurisprudence characteristic of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Before the Era of Balance seriously with Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, 25 p. Ct. 539, 49 L. Ed.
937 (1905), the court held that a New York law fixing maximum hours of work was constitutional, since such a regulation fell within the state`s police power. In that decision, the court did not seek to balance the rights of the individual against the interests of the state, but directly examined the wording of the law and found it to be valid. This previous court stated: “The object of a law must result from the natural and legal effect of the language used. It seems to us that the real purpose [of the act] was simply to regulate the hours of work between the master and his employees. Early proponents of balance included prominent Supreme Court justices such as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Louis D. Brandeis, and Harlan F. Stone, all of whom served on the court from the early to mid-1900s. Holmes, sometimes called the patron saint of the anti-formalist movement, was one of the first to defend the idea that the law is and should be an evolutionary product of social experience. He argued that rigid formulas could be applied to all situations before the Court.
“The law is a logical development, like everything else,” he wrote. Similarly, Brandeis criticized the court for ignoring current social, political and economic issues. He said: “When a measure relating to the common good is arbitrary or unreasonable. should be based on an examination of relevant facts or circumstances” (Adams v. Tanner, 244 U.S. 590, 37 p. Ct. 662, 61 L.
Ed. 1336 [1917] [Brandeis, J., deviant]). In another case, he wrote: “The question of whether a law enacted in the exercise of police power is rightly subject to the charge of unreasonableness or arbitrariness can generally be determined only by taking into account the current social, industrial and political conditions of the community concerned. Recourse to such facts is necessary, inter alia, to identify the evils to be remedied and the possible effects of the proposed remedy” (Truax v. Corrigan, 257 U.S. 312, 42 pp. Ct. 124, 66 L. Ed. 254 [1921] [Brandeis, J., deviant]). Similarly, Stone strongly advocated “the examination of all facts and circumstances” in a case, including the social conditions affecting the parties, the controversy, and the outcome (DiSanto v. Pennsylvania, 273 U.S.
34, 47 p. Ct. 267, 71 L. Ed. 524 [1927] [Stone, J., deviant]). Finally, courts of appeal often conduct some form of balancing to examine the legality of a decision of a lower court. In addition to the U.S. Supreme Court examples above, appellate courts apply various standards of examination whereby they evaluate the data set to detect errors using some form of balance analysis. For example, the standard of review of substantial evidence requires courts of appeal to determine whether a lower court`s decision was supported by sufficient evidence to avoid it being overturned, which means that the court of appeal must weigh the evidence presented by the parties to a certain extent. Courts of appeal that apply the standard of arbitrary and capricious review must not only consider the seriousness of the alleged arbitrary or capricious conduct in the lower court, but also consider any evidence that makes the lower court`s decision reasonable or justified.
Subscribe to America`s largest dictionary and get thousands of additional definitions and advanced search – ad-free! A “balancing test” is defined as a subjective test by which a court assesses competing interests. For example, a court would assess the interest between an inmate`s interest in liberty and the government`s interest in public safety to decide which interest prevails. The balance has repeatedly sparked controversy among jurists and judges. Critics argue that it gives too much discretion to judges and amounts to a usurpation of the legislative function. They argue that this is a vague and arbitrary method of measuring unequal interests in relation to each other, and that it leads to unpredictable decisions. A vocal critic of balance is Judge Antonin Scalia. In its dissenting opinion in Bendix Autolite Corp. v.
Midwesco Enterprises, 486 U.S. 888, 108 p. Ct. 2218, 100 L. Ed. 2d 896 (1988), he described the balancing of competing interests as an illusion. “The analogy of scale is not really appropriate,” he wrote, “because the interests of both sides are incompatible. It`s more like judging whether a certain line is longer than a certain rock is heavy. The Court most often uses a balanced approach to rule on cases where constitutionally protected individual rights conflict with the government`s interests.
Many of the fundamental constitutional cases of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s were decided this way, including Roe v.