Lochner era

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The Lochner era is a period in American legal history from roughly 1890 to 1937 in which the United States Supreme Court tended to strike down economic regulations mandating certain working conditions or wages, or limiting working hours in favor of laissez-faire economic policy. In the eponymous 1905 case of Lochner v. New York, the Court struck down a New York State law limiting the number of hours bakers could work on the grounds that it violated bakers' "right to contract," a right implicit in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This doctrine, known as Substantive Due Process, defined the Court during the Lochner era.

Other representative cases include Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918), where the court struck down legislation outlawing child labor in factories where children under 14 worked; as well as Adkins v. Children's Hospital (1923), where the court struck down state legislation that mandated a minimum wage level for women in D.C..

The era is considered to have ended with the overturning of Adkins v. Children's Hospital in the 1937 case of West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish. In "Adkins" the court held that a D.C. law assigning minimum wage for women violated due process. "West Coast Hotel" overruled Adkins in that it upheld a state minimum wage law for women. The court said that the Constitution is subject to the restraints of Due Process and that REGULATION which is reasonable in relation to its subject and is adopted in the interests of the community IS Due Process. The court said that the state was acting in the public's interest - by protecting the health of women from their greedy employers. The court said that it must only consider whether the legislature's purpose was arbitrary, and that it doesn't have to go further in the analysis once it decides that the legislature was acting within reason.

Since that period the Lochner era is considered by both liberals and conservatives alike to be a regrettable period in U.S. jurisprudence, each for different reasons. Liberals consider it a shameful time for workers' rights. Conservatives cite it as an example of inappropriate judicial activism.^{[citation needed]}

However, many libertarians view Lochner and its progeny as laudable cases for their recognition of individual liberty.^{[citation needed]} They see it not as judicial activism but as the proper exercise of judicial review, striking down laws that are unconstitutional under the fifth and/or fourteenth amendments. Supporters of Lochner also point out the supposed inconsistency of subsequent cases in the post-West Coast Hotel era.