There’s actually a pretty regimented set of rules for the sort of sliding scale you’re talking about. Put succinctly, if the government wants to regulate against your fundamental rights, they have to have a really really good interest and their mechanism must be as narrowly tailored as possible. Less fundamental rights might be regulated against based on an interest that isn’t as strong, or a mechanism that isn’t as narrow, maybe one that is only connected to the interest by a “rational basis”, even if it wasn’t the intent that the legislature had.
Most people other than Rudy Giuliani call these ways of analyzing whether a law is constitutional strict scrutiny and rational basis scrutiny. For intermediate rights, the standard is (wait for it) intermediate scrutiny.
I am only scratching the surface of this subject but you are absolutely right to intuit that the linkage between the means and and the interest.
There’s actually a pretty regimented set of rules for the sort of sliding scale you’re talking about. Put succinctly, if the government wants to regulate against your fundamental rights, they have to have a really really good interest and their mechanism must be as narrowly tailored as possible. Less fundamental rights might be regulated against based on an interest that isn’t as strong, or a mechanism that isn’t as narrow, maybe one that is only connected to the interest by a “rational basis”, even if it wasn’t the intent that the legislature had.
Most people other than Rudy Giuliani call these ways of analyzing whether a law is constitutional strict scrutiny and rational basis scrutiny. For intermediate rights, the standard is (wait for it) intermediate scrutiny.
I am only scratching the surface of this subject but you are absolutely right to intuit that the linkage between the means and and the interest.
Either that or you already knew all this but hey.