# Lochner v. New York (April 17, 1905) On **April 17, 1905**, the Supreme Court ruled **5–4** in *Lochner v. New York* that a New York statute limiting bakery workers to 60 hours per week and 10 hours per day violated the **"liberty of contract"** implied by the [[Fourteenth Amendment]]'s Due Process Clause. Justice Rufus Peckham's majority opinion held that the state had no legitimate police-power interest in regulating the hours of bakers — that the law was "an unreasonable, unnecessary and arbitrary interference with the right of the individual to his personal liberty." *Lochner* inaugurated the **Lochner era** (roughly 1905–1937), during which the Court struck down roughly 200 state and federal regulations — minimum wage laws, child labor laws, workplace safety standards, union protections — on the theory that economic regulation violated a constitutionally implied right to freedom of contract. The era ended only when FDR's threat to pack the Court produced the "switch in time that saved nine" (*[[West Coast Hotel v. Parrish]]*, 1937), and the Court abandoned substantive due process review of economic legislation. ## Why It Matters Now For most of the 20th century, *Lochner* was treated as a cautionary example — the case law schools taught as an illustration of **judicial overreach** and the dangers of judges reading their economic preferences into the Constitution. "Lochnerism" became an epithet used to accuse judges of substituting their policy preferences for legislative judgment. But within the contemporary conservative legal movement, *Lochner* has been **partially rehabilitated**. Scholars associated with the [[Federalist Society]] and libertarian legal circles have argued that the Lochner-era Court was correct to protect economic liberty against legislative encroachment, and that the post-1937 abandonment of substantive economic due process was the real error. This rehabilitation project has implications for the modern deregulatory agenda: - **[[West Virginia v. EPA]]** (2022) — the "major questions doctrine" limits agency regulatory authority in ways that echo Lochner-era skepticism of government economic regulation - **[[Loper Bright v. Raimondo]]** (2024) — overturning Chevron deference removes judicial deference to agency interpretations, returning regulatory disputes to judicial judgment in a manner structurally similar to Lochner-era review - The broader [[Originalism]] project to constitutionalize economic liberty draws on Lochner-era reasoning even when it avoids citing Lochner by name The Lochner era is the **template** for what the contemporary conservative legal movement is building: a constitutional framework in which the judiciary, rather than the legislature, determines the permissible scope of economic regulation. ## KB Significance 1. **The original economic-liberty Court.** *Lochner* established the precedent that the judiciary can strike down economic regulation on constitutional grounds — the precedent that the progressive era, the [[New Deal]], and the post-war consensus all fought to overcome, and that the contemporary conservative legal movement is working to restore. 2. **The Taney pattern (economic variant).** Like *Dred Scott*, *Plessy*, and *Shelby County*, *Lochner* used constitutional interpretation to protect existing power hierarchies — in this case, the economic hierarchy of the [[Gilded Age]] — against democratic attempts to regulate them. ## See Also - [[Citizens United v. FEC]] — The modern equivalent: constitutionalizing donor-class power through the [[First Amendment]] rather than the Fourteenth - [[Originalism]] — The interpretive method through which Lochner-era reasoning is being rehabilitated - [[Supreme Court Rulings Hub]] — The MOC for all SCOTUS cases in the KB