Tulsa Law Review Volume 33 Issue 1 Dedicated to the U.S. Supreme Court Fall 1997 Fairness As a General Principle of American Constitutional Law: Applying Extra-Constitutional Principles to Constitutional Cases in Hendricks and M.L.B. Larry Cata Backer Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.utulsa.edu/tlr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Larry C. Backer, Fairness As a General Principle of American Constitutional Law: Applying Extra- Constitutional Principles to Constitutional Cases in Hendricks and M.L.B., 33 Tulsa L. J. 135 (2013). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.utulsa.edu/tlr/vol33/iss1/10 This Supreme Court Review Symposia Articles is brought to you for free and open access by TU Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Tulsa Law Review by an authorized editor of TU Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Backer: Fairness As a General Principle of American Constitutional Law: A FAIRNESS AS A GENERAL PRINCIPLE OF AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW: APPLYING EXTRA-CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES TO CONSTITUTIONAL CASES IN HENDRICKS AND M.L.B.* Larry Cat Backert We speak the unifying language of fairness in law-making in the late twentieth century. This is the age of due process. The language offairness provides the unifying glue to our law making.1 It is almost a cliche today that, at its limit, all legal categories explode. It is also a commonplace that legal categories tend to be shoved to their limit over the course of time, unless the categories are redefined or destroyed by the weight of their own expansiveness.2 These quasi-biological truisms affect not only statutory and common law legal categories, but increasingly, constitutional categories as well.