Joseph Lochner U.S. Supreme Court, Lochner v. New York (1905)

1.The New York statute limiting the number of hours a baker can work in a week interferes with the right of contract between the employer and the employees. 2.No State can deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law. The right to purchase or to sell labor is part of the liberty protected by this amendment. 3.There is a limit to the valid exercise of the police power of the state. 4.There is no reasonable ground for interfering with the liberty of person or the right of free contract, by determining the hours of labor, in the occupation of a baker. 5.There must be more than the mere fact of the possible existence of some small amount of unhealthiness to warrant legislative interference with liberty. Mr. Justice Peckham delivers the Court Opinion:

The decision violates states rights. “Let the State alone I the management of its purely domestic affairs, so long as it does not appear beyond all question that it has violated the Federal Constitution. This view necessarily results from the principle that the health and safety of the people of a State are primarily for the State to guard and protect.” Mr. Justice Harlan…dissenting.

The majority has a right to embody their opinions in law. The constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory, wither of paternalism and the organic relation of the citizen to the State or of laissez faire. The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Social Statistics. Mr. Justice Holmes dissenting