What would the effect of the ERA be on all-women’s colleges?
Switzerland did that in 1999 - replace the constitution of 1874 with an entirely new document.
I’m sorry but I just disagree with you on this. There has never been a time when business was left unchecked that it didn’t create health and safety problems for its workers and its customers in the name of profit. Until the government stepped in, as was shown in my cites, business was happily selling poisened food to its customers. That’s just one examle.
Business is only concerned with SHORT TERM profitability and not with long term costs. I think the tobacco industry is a really good example of this closer to our times. They knew they were killing people decades before they admitted it. They kept lying to their customers knowing full well that a large percentage of them would be killed by their product.
What good does business do again?
Generally free market – the United States.
Little, if any, free market and independent businesses – North Korea, Cuba.
Where would you rather live?
Obviously, businesses do a lot of good for people.
Can’t we just agree that a balance between business and governrment is necessary for maximum benefit? Of course free market principles have given us the strong economy we have. But we must not ignore abuses. Identifying and stopping abuses is what governrment is for. Totally unfettered business will selfishly ignore the health and safety of the populace. With some reins, though, the system works pretty well.
[legal nitpick] I don’t think this is quite right. The standard isn’t “no other method” or “absolutely necessary,” but rather whether there is a narrow nexus between means and ends. Thus, in Korematsu, for example, the government didn’t have to show that there was no alternative, just that this action was closely related to the compelling interest. [/legal nitpick]
Sorry, but the original formulation was strengthened. It is now usually stated that the classification must be “necessary” to promote a “compelling state interest.” Necessary means you can’t do it some other way.
However, it should be noted that the Court has in various cases refused to apply this particular standard without bothering to explain precisely why it won’t. Examples include certain voting rights cases (Ball v. James, 451 U.S. 355 (1981)), interstate travel cases (e.g.: Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U.S. 393 (1975), etc. I applied the usual application in non-benign racial discrimination cases because presumably the ERA supporters would be wanting to have the same standard as applies to racial discrimination apply to gender discrimination. In non-benign racial discrimination cases, I believe the standard remains “necessary.”
The 19th (much like the ERA) wasn’t strictly necessary to give the rights it granted. Several states had already granted women the vote when the 19th came into play. The amendment just brought it to the rest of the nation in one big swoop and enshrined it in the constitution. In contrast, the constitution as originally written defined a black man as worth 2/3rds of a white man regarding representation in the house, and the Dred Scot decision (wrongly, but it was SCOTUS so it counted) ruled that blacks had virtually no rights under the US constitution (perhaps women had a similar ruling against them, but I haven’t heard about it). The 14th and 15th amendments were necessary to change that. AFAIK, no such bar exists regarding women. IOW, there’s nothing in the US constitution as currently interpreted that prevents the government from acting as if there was an ERA, even without one.
The ERA would be almost purely symbolic, which is not to say that it’d be worthless. ISTM that the most noticeable changes would be in the military and selective service. Although it would probably also complicate gender-based affirmative action measures.
I’m also seeing a few people here implying the the ERA would be a strike against sexism everywhere, such as in the corporate sector. It wouldn’t. It just prevents the government from being sexist. It doesn’t even guarantee that the government has to have the laws against discrimination that it currently has. I support the ERA, but let’s be realistic about what it would accomplish.
Can you point me to some cases where the court has upheld the Loving version of the standard? I don’t speak from any practical knowledge of constitutional law, I was just giving you what my professor lectured on last Friday. I’d love to show up on Monday with counter-evidence. 
To be fair, I think her point was that from a legal realist perspective, the standard has never been as strict as “necessary,” at least not in the sense that there can be no available alternative.
I’m right there with you. I was only responding to Renob’s claim that businesses could never survive if they put profit over safety. A demonstrably absurd claim.
Sorry about the hijack, but since this thread seems to be pretty dead. I’m still wondering about this topic if you have a chance, DSYoungEsq. Reading the 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, I am even more convinced that the standard in all racial strict scrutiny cases is narrow tailoring, not necessity in the sense of no other alternatives. Indeed, O’Connor writes, “Narrow tailoring does not require exhaustion of every conceivable race-neutral alternative.” It also seems like the court has long rejected the distinction between benign and non-benign racial classification, at least as it relates to the level of scrutiny to be applied.