James Bradley Thayer was an American legal scholar and educator who lived from 15 January 1831 to 14 February 1902. He taught at Harvard Law School from 1873 until his death, eventually holding the Weld professorship, and his students there included Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Learned Hand. In his 1893 article The Origin and Scope of the American Doctrine of Constitutional Law he articulated what became known as rational basis review, arguing that courts should strike down a statute only when its unconstitutionality is so clear as to leave no room for rational doubt, a doctrine of judicial restraint that shaped the development of American constitutional law.
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