We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Anti-Reform Politics, the Lochner Case, and Substantive Due Process.
- Authors
Ji-Hyung Cho
- Abstract
This essay reevaluates the history of Lochner v. New York (1905) as well as the history of substantive due process of law. The Lochner case represents a major case of judicial activism in which the Court imposed laissez-faire constitutionalism and Social Darwinism in the interest of capital against labor, and usurped power beyond the constitutional limits as a super-legislature. Moreover the Lochner case symbolized the mostly discredited invention of substantive due process as a vehicle to block social reform legislation. The legal norm of substantive due process developed more fully in state courts than in federal courts during the antebellum period. The courts curtailed the power of legislatures in order to show their distaste for "class legislation" and to defend the sacred vested rights of property. The substantive discourse developed on the bases of traditional constitutional ideals such as state neutrality and the generality of law. After the Civil War, as the American society became highly industrial and complex, the ideal of the liberty of contract evolved as evidence of a highly advanced civilization. As a predominantly legal struggle between non-union masters of small bakeries vs. the bakers' union of factory, the Lochner case guaranteed the liberty of contract against the exercise of the police power of state, although the theory of "class legislation" was used before the Court.
- Subjects
NEW York (State); UNITED States; ESSAYS; LOCHNER v. People of the State of New York; BAKERY employees; DUE process of law; HOLMES, Oliver Wendell, 1841-1935; LABOR laws; UNITED States. Supreme Court; STATUS (Law)
- Publication
Miguk-sa Yongu, 2008, Vol 27, p37
- ISSN
1229-0238
- Publication type
Essay