ABSTRACT
Frank Skrupta challenged a Kansas law restricting the business of debt adjusting to licensed attorneys. Ferguson v. Skrupta, 372 US 726, is the most direct demonstration of the extent to which the US Supreme Court deferred to legislatures on economic matters in the late twentieth century. The case repudiated the dominant judicial philosophy of the early part of the twentieth century, which had given significant protection to economic liberties. Skrupta, who was not a lawyer, argued that lawyers dominated the state legislature and that their self-interests as lawyers affected their decision as to who was best equipped to settle debt problems. Ferguson v. Skrupta rejected the line of Supreme Court cases imposing the doctrine of substantive due process onto the state and later the national governments. The "new" substantive due process cases established a constitutional right to certain forms of expressive individualism.
