Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly Volume 36 Article 2 Number 2 Winter 2009 1-1-2009 The yM th of Laissez-Faire Constitutionalism: Liberty of Contract during the Lochner Era David N. Mayer Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/ hastings_constitutional_law_quaterly Part of the Constitutional Law Commons Recommended Citation David N. Mayer, The Myth of Laissez-Faire Constitutionalism: Liberty of Contract during the Lochner Era, 36 Hastings Const. L.Q. 217 (2009). Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_constitutional_law_quaterly/vol36/iss2/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly by an authorized editor of UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. The Myth of "Laissez-Faire Constitutionalism": Liberty of Contract During the Lochner Era by DAVID N. MAYER* Introduction No period in American constitutional history is as misunderstood as the so-called "era of laissez-faire constitutionalism," also known as the "Lochner era," for its best-known U.S. Supreme Court decision.' For forty years, from 18972 until 1937, 3 the Supreme Court used the due process clauses of the * Professor of Law and History, Capital University, Columbus, Ohio. Copyright © David N. Mayer. 1. Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905). In Lochner, the Court held unconstitutional a New York statute prohibiting bakery employees from working more than ten hours a day or sixty hours a week. The majority of the Court considered the statute to abridge "the right of contract" between employer and employee, which was "part of the liberty of the individual" protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.