Digital Commons at St. Mary's University Faculty Articles School of Law Faculty Scholarship 1994 The State Interest in the Good Citizen: Constitutional Balance between the Citizen and the Perfectionist State Stephen M. Sheppard St. Mary's University School of Law,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.stmarytx.edu/facarticles Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Stephen M. Sheppard, The State Interest in the Good Citizen: Constitutional Balance between the Citizen and the Perfectionist State, 45 Hastings L. J. 969 (1994). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Law Faculty Scholarship at Digital Commons at St. Mary's University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Articles by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons at St. Mary's University. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. The State Interest in the Good Citizen: Constitutional Balance Between the Citizen and the Perfectionist State by STEVE SHEPPARD* Poetic Justice, with her lifted scale, Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs, And solid pudding against empty praise.' Introduction The balance has been a popular metaphor of judgment for millen- nia. Ancient Egyptians, Israelites, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans employed the balance as an image to assay rival versions of truth and to judge one's virtue.2 Nevertheless, a tension in meaning pervades * Assistant Professor, Thomas M. Cooley Law School, and Advanced Student, Uni- versity College, Oxford, England. I owe thanks to many people for help in herding to- gether and keeping corralled the ideas in this Article.