Carolene Products was being reprimanded for their use of non-milk fat in milk. This particular case was an attempt to deny filled products from being sold and shipped between states. Written in the fourth footnote of this case, Justice Stone reflects how laws and regulations which are overlapping the national Bill of Rights should be reduced or waived, the special care of the US Supreme Court to support foundational liberties like those supported by the Fourteenth Amendment, and the necessity of the court to support minorities.
The Preferred Freedoms Doctrine creates a hierarchy of personal freedoms. The idea essentially states some liberties, like those contained in the First Amendment, should be handled with extra care since they are foundational to living in a free society. It was built on the ideas laid out in how freedom of speech cases were handled with intent of the message as opposed to prior economic cases that were handled more on rationale. The doctrine revealed itself in more solidified form in Footnote Four in United States v. Carolene Products in 1938. The next year it was put into practice in challenging and repealing multiple state laws restricting the ability of people to hand out flyers and solicit houses with handbills. Although the direct use of preferred freedoms changed over the new few years, it successfully set the status quo of how First Amendment cases would be handled.
I feel this is an odd place to find such a pivotal doctrine, but It is still helpful it exists. When talking law and court, even the most implied thoughts and ideas are challenged if they aren’t written somewhere (even the footnotes). This is why it is important to keep up with these cases, but have you ever tried reading one of these things? It isn’t easy. There were other sections of this assignment I was going to post, but I could bring myself to posting them. They are too dense. I did, however have some interesting thoughts on the “Lemon Test” and Establishment Clause. This will be up and coming since I will need to make those selections more digestible.
This is my first bit of writing on globalization. I could not help but to write on globalization’s hand in guiding poverty up and down. I might have been too specific and detailed for this assignment, but I have yet to see a grade on it. Enjoy the read:
The positive effects of globalization on poverty are noticed from multiple perspectives. “If world inequality is narrowing, perhaps more significant is the fact that absolute poverty is rapidly declining. By comparison with 1980, 200 million fewer people live in absolute poverty” (Held McGrew 126). Impoverished countries, however, are barely clinging to life and feeling affects of the gain or loss of wealth from larger countries. Recent study shows the link between the recent global financial crisis with child mortality in the third world. The article by Jed Friedman and Norber Schady, which was posted on the World Bank website, stated “there will be 30,000 – 50,000 excess infant deaths in sub-Saharan Africa” (http://go.worldbank.org/RNMUWTQN50) related to the latest international monetary setback. According to the UN’s update on their ambitious poverty goals, “More than halfway to the 2015 deadline to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), major advances in the fight against poverty and hunger have begun to slow or even reverse as a result of the global economic and food crises, a progress report by the United Nations has found” (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/).
Globalization does help those countries in the short term by providing more immediate aid with a sort of global welfare system. One of the trends I have noticed in researching globalization is the tendency of developed nations to be generous and work to the aid of those less fortunate. The US contributions more than doubled between 1996 and 2006 to nonprofits (Amy Blackwood, Kennard T. Wing and Thomas H. Pollak, The Nonprofit Sector in Brief Facts and Figures from the Nonprofit Almanac 2008: Public Charities, Giving, and Volunteering. The Urban Institute). Even larger organizations coordinate different efforts and initiatives to aid the poor and needy as recently noticed by the response to Haiti. The Associated Press estimates nearly $1billion has been pledged to the shaken country (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/H/HAITI_EARTHQUAKE_AID_GLANCE?SITE=RIPAW&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT).
I have been mulling over many other ideas that might be too much to share in one post. I will say I concur with Bhagwait in his thought of making investment options more accessible to the poor in order to assist them in attaining wealth in the long term (Bhagwait 59). Stiglitz also made good points about purchasing from local businesses over international companies (Stiglitz 68) especially in the case of America where “firms with fewer than 500 employees accounted for 64 percent (or 14.5 million) of the 22.5 million net new jobs (gains minus losses) between 1993 and the third quarter of 2008” (www.sba.gov/advo/stats/sbfaq.pdf).
Attempting to stop globalization is like an ant trying to stop a landslide, but we must stay informed and continue to dig deep for data and trends in order to attempt to bring order to the chaos.
This paper was written for a global justice movement class. Feel free to ask me about any of the references. Some of them were not posted due to brevity.
Let me know what you think.
Josh Grace
