Lecture 45 Economic Substantive Due Process Part 4: The Heyday

This lecture We will over the Heyday of Substantive Due Process Pages 654-658

Adkins v. Children’s Hospital (1923) Background The Congress establishes a Minimum Wage Board for the District of Columbia which had the authority to set a minimum wage for children and women The Board set the wage for women at 34.5 cents an hour The Children’s Hospital sued claiming it violated its due process rights They said it encompasses the liberty to enter into salary contracts with employees A laid off employee sued because she said she lost her job due to the higher wages Question Did the law interfere with the ability of employers and employees to enter into contracts with each other without violating due process of law under the 5th Amendment?

Adkins v. Children’s Hospital- II Arguments For Adkins (uphold the law) This law is reasonable It is aimed at safeguarding women and children and is a legitimate end The means are legitimate exercises to a legislative end For Children’s Hospital (strike down the law) This is only a bill to fix wages It violates the 5th Amendment by prohibiting her from negotiating for wages Problems are not solved by excluding men The law is not temporary or spurred by an emergency

Adkins v. Children’s Hospital- III Sutherland riles for a 5-3 Court Joined by Butler, McReynolds, Van Devanter, and McKenna This is exclusively a price fixing law applied to adult women This forbids them and employers from freely contracting for wages He notes that the distinction between men and women as no longer as rigid The liberty to do as one wants is not absolute But this still goes too far need extraordinary circumstances If one could set minimum wage laws, what about maximum wage laws? “For surely the good of society as a whole cannot be better served than by the preservation against arbitrary restraint of the liberties of its constituent members”

Adkins v. Children’s Hospital- IV Chief Justice Taft, dissenting Joined by Justice Sanford He thinks the Court went to far He would be more deferential to Congress “But it is not the function of this court to hold congressional acts invalid simply because they are passed to carry out economic views which the court believes to be unwise or unsound” He thinks the controlling precedent should be Bunting, not Lochner He would therefore overrule Lochner

Adkins v. Children’s Hospital- V Justice Holmes, dissenting He would also urge deference He criticizes the Court for adopting adherence to “Liberty of Contract” He calls it “dogma, Liberty of Contract” It is not found in the text of either amendment

Changes to the Court By 1922 all the Four Horsemen were on the Court They would all remain there until 1937 They had many tools in their arsenals to strike down federal regulations

Next Lecture We move to the New Deal cases and the decline of substantive Due Process Pages 658-669