The New Deal, Part 2: The Supreme Court Against Reform
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The New Deal, Part 2: The Supreme Court Against Reform
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By the 1920s, reformers were trying to limit punishing work hours, establish minimum wages, break up monopolies, and curb child labor—and the Supreme Court was increasingly prepared to stop them.
In Part 2 of our New Deal series, we enter the Lochner era through New York City’s filthy tenement bakeries and the Supreme Court’s decision in Lochner v. New York. From the Court’s expansive “freedom of contract” doctrine to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s famous dissent and the rise of legal realism, this episode explores a growing battle over whether judges or legislatures should decide how the law responds to industrial America.
We also trace the Court’s rejection of a minimum wage for women in Adkins v. Children’s Hospital and its narrow, sometimes shifting interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause in United States v. E. C. Knight Co., Swift & Co. v. United States, and the child-labor cases. With former President William Howard Taft now serving as chief justice, the Court becomes increasingly aggressive in striking down social legislation—bringing the nation closer to its historic confrontation with the New Deal.