Lochner v. New York (1905), which pitted a conservative activist
judiciary against a reform-minded legislature, remains one of the
most important and most frequently cited cases in Supreme Court
history. In this concise and readable guide, Paul Kens shows us why
the case remains such an important marker in the ideological
battles between the free market and the regulatory state.
The Supreme Court's decision declared unconstitutional a New
York State law limiting bakery workers to no more than ten hours
per day or sixty hours per week. By evoking its "police power," the
state hoped to eliminate the employers' abuse of these workers. But
the 5-4 majority opinion, authored by Justice Rufus Peckham and
renounced by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, cited the state's
violation of due process and the "right of contract between
employers and employees," which the majority believed was protected
by the Fourteenth Amendment.
Critics jumped on the decision as an example of conservative
juidicial activism promoting laissez-faire capitalism at the
expense of progressive reform. As series editors Peter Hoffer and
N.E.H. Hull note in their preface, "the case also raised a host of
significant questions regarding the impetus of state legislatures
to enter the workplace and regulate hours, wages, and working
conditions; of the role of courts as monitors of the
constitutionality of state regulation of the economy; and of the
place of economic and moral theories in judicial thinking."
Kens, however, reminds us that these hotly contested ideas and
principles emerged from a very real human drama involving workers,
owners, legislators, lawyers, and judges. Within the crucible of an
industrializing America, their story reflected the fierce
competition between two powerful ideologies.
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