RSS Feed
News
Doc of the Day: Lochner v. New York
04/17/10
On April 17, 1905, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling on employment law in the case of Lochner v. New York. The case concerned a New York state law aimed at improving sanitary and working conditions in bakeries by limiting employees to a maximum of 60 hours per week or 10 hours per day. In a controversial, 5-4 opinion, the Supreme Court found that the law violated the freedom of contract implicit in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
In his often-quoted dissent in the case, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. declared that the Constitution “is not intended to embody a particular economic theory” and argued that state governments must have the power to enact economic legislation to protect the health and well-being of their citizens. Holmes’s opinion notwithstanding, the Court used the Lochner reasoning to overturn a number of progressive state employment laws over the next three decades.
Read the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in LOCHNER V. NEW YORK
Read OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR.’S DISSENT IN LOCHNER V. NEW YORK