The Right to "Quiet Enjoyment"

This is argued to justify making breach of the peace illegal. It interferes with peace, which suggests that we have a right to it. Since this is not mentioned in the U.S. or Texas Bills of Rights, we would assume this is an unenumerated right.

LII: quiet enjoyment.

Quiet enjoyment is the right to inhabit or use certain property without disturbance. This term is most frequently used in property law, where the right to quiet enjoyment protects tenants from intrusions and guarantees certain basic necessities of a home. Moreover, in states such as California, quiet enjoyment protects tenants from not only landlords personally, but neighbors under the landlord as well.

There is an implied covenant of quiet enjoyment in leases and states generally have their own statutes codifying these protections. For example, under the California Civil Code, an agreement to hire property also secures the hirer the quiet possession of the property against all persons lawfully claiming the property. Furthermore, a landlord may not, for the purposes of forcing a tenant from the premise, engage in conduct that is menacing or significantly interferes with the tenant's purpose of leasing the premise. Significant interference generally encompasses more than denial of access or possession to the premises. For example, in New Hampshire, where partial access to a commercial lessee's property was blocked due to the landlord's construction, it is deemed to be a breach of quiet enjoyment because the denial of access, even partial, was significant enough to deprive the lessee's beneficial use of the premise.

 

What was Lochner v New York?

It was a case the inferred that a right of contract existed within the scope of due process clause of the Constitution and that this was sufficient for the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a New York law establishing a 60 hour work week.

We will discuss these further in class, but these are links relevant to the story. Not only do they touch on issues related to a specific era of American constitutional history, it may foreshadow where we may be going in the near future.

- Click here for the Wikipedia on Lochner v New York.
- The Lochner Era.
- Why the consensus against Lochner v. New York is beginning to fray.

Wilkinson on the left, the right and the Constitution

J. Harvie Wilkinson - whose book "Cosmic Constitutional Theory" we mentioned in class some time ago - criticized the left and right for assaulting the Constitution in their own peculiar ways.

He disagrees with the conservative arguments against the use of the commerce clause to regulate interstate activity - including the "inactivity" allegedly regulated in the Affordable Care Act:

As a political argument, that resonates: “Don’t Tread On Me” trumpets the imperishable spirit of American liberty. But as a constitutional argument, it would imbue judges with unprecedented powers to topple an exhaustively debated and duly enacted federal law and to make the determination that the decision not to buy ice cream can be neatly severed from the decision to buy chocolate or vanilla.

In curbing federal excess, courts risk lessening our national economic strength. That strength resides partly in the national aspects of our founding document, among them the now maligned commerce clause and the newly mistrusted supremacy clause, which gives preference to federal over state law when there is a conflict. States’ rights are important in many spheres, but the benefits of a national economic policy must also be considered. A vibrant economic order requires some political predictability, and the prospect of judges’ striking down commercial regulation on ill-defined and subjective bases is a prescription for economic chaos that the framers, in a simpler time, had the good sense to head off.

If one simply wishes to repeal the law, repeal the law, don't use the courts to negate any future effort to find national solutions to national problems.

He also disagrees with liberal arguments that the broad language of the Constitution encompasses rights that go beyond those clearly written in the document:

Just like the opponents of the Affordable Care Act, the proponents of reproductive choice and same-sex marriage have strong arguments — but they are political, not constitutional. What are the consequences when liberals shortchange democratic liberty in favor of judicial expansion of unenumerated personal rights? Well, for one, creating constitutional rights without foundation frays the community fabric and, with it, the very notion that the majority can enact into law some expression of shared values that make ours a society whose whole is more than the sum of its parts. In pushing a constitutional vision of autonomous individuals divested of location in larger social settings, liberals risk weakening the communal values and institutions that best afford our most disadvantaged the chance for a good life.
The common thread in each argument is that the constitutional factors that have allowed for the development of strong communities that both share values and are willing to work together to solve mutual problems has been weakened in favor of - what he might call - radical individualism.

Here are readers' responses, including one that brings up the 9th Amendment - which we discussed in 2301.

Dr. Kevorkian and the 9th Amendment

He now claims that his mission is to educate people about it.