Liberty of Contract - 9781935308386

From 1897 until 1937, Mayer (law and history, Capital U.) argues approvingly, the US Supreme Court consistently protected liberty of contract as a fundamental right stemming from constitutional provisions that barred the federal government, under the Fifth Amendment, and states, under the Fourteenth, from depriving persons of "life, liberty, or property without due process of law," meaning that laws dictating such things as maximum hours, minimum wages, business licensing, housing segregation, and compulsory education were struck down as unconstitutional interferences with the liberty of contract. These "Lochner era" decisions (named after the 1905 Lochner v. New York decision), he further argues, have since been widely mischaracterized as judicial activism, "laissez-faire constitutionalism" in favor of rich capitalists, and a product of legal formalism. He provides a revisionist view, contending that the decline of Lochner-style decisions in the New Deal era represented an abandonment by the Court of a general protection of liberty against the government's police power in favor of a double standard wherein the Court favored progressive "social legislation" expanding the police power in opposition to freedom of contract while conversely maintaining protection of liberty rights, such as those listed in the Bill of Rights as well as other rights such as voting and the right to privacy. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)