Doug Rafferty, age 14, of Carson City, Nev., for his question:

CAN YOU EXPLAIN POLICE POWER?

Police power, in United States domestic law, is a term used to designate the power exercised by a state or municipal government to enact legislation regulating private interests for the protection of the safety, health and morals of the people, the prevention of fraud and oppression, and the promotion of the public convenience, prosperity and welfare.

The exact scope of police power is difficult to define. It covers many things.

Police power, for example, covers the maintenance of the peace by the police. It also covers the regulation of rates charged by public service corporations. In addition, it covers the regulation of security issues by so called Blue Sky laws, which are statues intended to prevent fraud in the sale of stocks and bonds.

Police power also covers the regulation of hours of labor and such health regulations as quarantine and compulsory vaccination.

The police power rests on the general legislative authority and is limited only by express provisions contained in the United States Constitution or in state constitutions. Until 1936 the U.S. Supreme Court closely reviewed state and local police power regulations to determine whether they were reasonable under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. Frequently the Court invalidated state and local social legislation.

In recent decades the Supreme Court and other federal courts have declined to declare such legislation unconstitutional, except in the relatively few cases in which the police power has been exercised inconsistently with provisions of the Bill of Rights protecting freedom of speech or of religion or has failed to protect the procedural rights of citizens to a fair hearing or in other ways.

Some of the grants of authority vested by the Constitution are general, such as the power to regulate commerce. Others, however are specific, such as in the power to coin money and to establish post offices and post roads.

Since the 1930s, when the Supreme Court upheld much of the federal legislation contained in the program known as the New Deal, the legislative powers of the federal government have been consistently sustained by the courts, adding measurably to the ability of the national government to intervene in areas previously reserved to state and local governments through the exercise of the police power.

Here's the text of the first section of the 14th Amendment (ratified on July 9, 1868) regarding due process of law:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to thA  i». i*A•.^t•'.cn thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction on the equal protection of the laws."