re: #126 Anymouse 🌹

That goes back to the original interpretation of travel by automobile.

When the car was invented, courts routinely struck down any traffic law, testing, or registration as unconstitutional. That theory rested on IX Amendment interpretations, as well as common law interpretations that you pretty much had the right to walk, drag, push, or pull anything across the landscape. (For example, no one was taxed or registered to use the Oregon Trail.)

As the road carnage increased, state legislatures (especially Nebraska and Iowa, at the time the states with the most autos), then courts started cracking down on the idea … with rights (travel by automobile) comes responsibility (proof of competency, inspection, &c).

A person at the Oklahoma City University Law Review wrote an exhaustive article titled The Orphaned Right: The Right to Travel by Automobile, 1890-1950 (abstract, full document may be downloaded free or viewed as a PDF there - it is a fascinating article on the history of automobile licensing and registration).

The last “right to travel” cases were fought in the Fifties. After the Thirties or so, such cases universally lost in courts.

Similar arguments were made when the velocipede was invented and states tried to prohibit them or register them, but velocipedes (and later bicycles) continue to this day to be largely ignored by states (though some laws requiring helmets and such have been fought by libertarians as unconstitutional based on the old auto right to travel that existed in the nation).

Weren’t there velocipedes in Jurassic Park?