Thursday, September 21, 2006

Scrutinizing Your Pants

My Con Law professor had an amusing analogy for levels of scrutiny the court uses to determine whether a law is discriminatory under the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

The 3 levels of course are strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, and the rational basis test. Strict is obviously the highest level, rational basis the lowest.

He compared the rational basis test to a pair of baggy jeans: the fit of the law to the purpose just has to be loose.

He compared the strict scrutiny test to Spandex: the fit of the law has to be extremely tight to the government purpose.

What's intermediate then?

1 comment:

Lawyerlike said...

Parachute pants of course.

See:
http://shiveredsky.blogspot.com/2006/09/top-10-ugliest-most-embarrassing.html