The Constitution Besieged

by Gillman, Howard

• ISBN13: 9780822316428
• ISBN10: 0822316420
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-04-01
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

The Constitution Besiegedoffers a compelling reinterpretation of one of the most notorious periods in American constitutional history. In the decades following the Civil War, federal and state judges struck down as unconstitutional a great deal of innovative social and economic legislation. Scholars have traditionally viewed this as the work of a conservative judiciary more interested in promoting laissez-faire economics than in interpreting the Constitution. Gillman challenges this scholarly orthodoxy by showing how these judges were in fact observing a long-standing constitutional prohibition against "class legislation." Originally published in cloth by Duke University Press, this book received the 1994 C. Herman Pritchett Award for the "Best Book in the Field of Law and Courts," awarded by the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction	p. 1
The Origins of Lochner Era Police Powers Jurisprudence	p. 19
The Founders' Vision of a Republic Free of Factional Politics	p. 22
Political Equality and Market Liberty in Jacksonian America	p. 33
The Formative Years of Nineteenth-Century Police Powers Jurisprudence	p. 45
The Master Principle of Neutrality and the Rise of Class Conflict	p. 61
The Supreme Court Considers the Police Powers	p. 64
Industrialization, Class Conflict, and the Neutral State	p. 76
State Courts Respond to the Challenge of Class Conflict	p. 86
The Old Constitutionalism and the New Realism	p. 101
The Tradition of the Neutral Polity and the Regulation of Business	p. 104
Labor Legislation, the Neutral Polity, and the Bumpy Road to Lochner	p. 114
Lochner and the New Realism	p. 132
The Constitution Besieged	p. 147
The Assault on Government Neutrality and Traditional Police Powers Jurisprudence	p. 150
The Minimum Wage and the Fateful Persistence of Traditional Police Power Limits	p. 158
The Collapse of Traditional Police Powers Jurisprudence	p. 175
Afterword	p. 195
Notes	p. 207
Bibliography	p. 269
Table of Cases	p. 291
Index	p. 297
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