Terrance Sandalow

Comment on Warth v. Seldin

Abstract Although Warth v. Seldin is carefully cast in procedural terms, its significance is substantive. The real meaning of the decision is that the U.S. Supreme Court is not prepared to read into the federal constitution a limitation on suburban zoning power like that which the New Jersey Supreme Court read into the state constitution in Mt. Laurel.1 Warth is, thus, the Courts most recent rebuff of the varied efforts to use the fourteenth amendment as a weapon against the inegalitarian consequences of metropolitan fragmentation.1 Those who see in the vague language of that amendment a remedy for every social ill are sure to condemn the Courts passivity in the face of that malady. Yet, there is, as Paul Freund once wrote, “a morality of morality.” The mere existence of a social ill does not authorize the courts to prescribe the cure.