US Case Law on Economic Classification

           Research by Yasser Latif Hamdani           

1.                   Williamson v. Lee Optical, Inc., 348 U.S. 483 (1955)

Case Summary:

Provisions of an Oklahoma statute making it unlawful for any person not a licensed optometrist or ophthalmologist to fit lenses to a face or to duplicate or replace into frames lenses or other optical appliances except upon written prescriptive authority of an Oklahoma licensed ophthalmologist or optometrist, are not invalid under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. To subject opticians to this regulatory system while exempting all sellers of ready-to-wear glasses does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

US Supreme Court on Presumptions and Due Process- some landmark cases

By Yasser Latif Hamdani

Principle: It is clearly within the domain of the legislative branch of government to establish presumptions and rules respecting burden of proof in litigation.

1.       Hawkins v. Bleakly, 243 U.S. 210 (1917)  US SUPREME COURT on pages 1-2 of the attached copy of the Judgment

Excerpt:
The provisions in § 3 of the Iowa Workmen's Compensation Law, Laws of Iowa, 35 G.A. c. 147; Iowa Code Supp., 1913, § 2477m, requiring employees who reject the act to state by affidavit who, if anyone, requested or suggested that course, and providing that, where an employer or his agent has made such request or suggestion, the employee shall be conclusively presumed to have been unduly influenced and his rejection of the act shall be void. Held permissible regulation in aid of the general scheme of the act.
A workmen's compensation act which, prescribing the measure of compensation and the circumstances under which it is to be made, establishes a method of applying the measure to the facts of each case by due hearings before an administrative tribunal, whose action upon all fundamental and jurisdictional questions is subject to judicial review, is not open to objection upon the ground that it clothes the administrative body with an arbitrary and unbridled discretion in violation of due process of law.
Trial by jury is not one of the rights secured by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Due Process and Blasphemy Law

Perhaps the most interesting legal development through the 18th Amendment to the constitution of Pakistan was the introduction of Article 10-A, which reads: “For the determination of his civil rights and obligations or in any criminal charge against him, a person shall be entitled to a fair trial and due process.” This article exists under the unceremonious heading of ‘Right to fair trial’ but is nothing less than a revolutionary concept for a country like ours where liberty has so often been the victim of expediency, state oppression and the tyranny of the permanent majority. What it does — and, unfortunately, this is not appreciated enough by our jurists — is create within our constitution the idea of substantive due process above and beyond procedural due process that its heading seems to betray.