Lochner v. New York II

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     In 1905, the Supreme Court of the United States decided on the case Lochner v. New York, and in doing so overturned the Bakeshop Act, which limited the number of hours that a baker could work per day to ten. The Court ruled that the Act removed a person's right to enter freely into contracts, which it construed as provided for by the 14th Amendment. The Court had previously determined through multiple rulings that the Due Process Clause, found in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, was not merely a procedural guarantee, but also a substantive limitation on the type of control the government may exercise over individuals. Lochner set a precedent against the establishment federal and state laws regulating working hours and wages. For example, in Adkins v. Children's Hospital, in 1923, the Court ruled that federal minimum wage legislation for women was an unconstitutional infringement of liberty of contract, as protected by due process.
     Some subsequent development of human rights evolved on the basis of Lochner; for example, Adkins was a significant point in the women's rights movement in the U.S., as the legislature and justice department for decades debated whether to establish absolute equality of women or provide only special protections and regulations for them. Nevertheless, the Court overturned Adkins and undermined Lochner in deciding West Coast Hotel v. Parrish, in 1937. That ruling repudiated the idea that freedom of contract should be unrestricted and echoed after the fact the dissenting opinion of Justice Holmes in Adkins that there were plenty of constraints on contract, such as against usury. At the time of West Coast Hotel, whose outcome hinged on an unexpected shift in the habits of Associate Justice Roberts, the dissenting Justice Sutherland was critical of the prospect that interpretation of the Constitution had been influenced by strictly contemporary events--ostensibly, the pressures placed upon workers by the circumstances of the ongoing Great Depression. Time has evidently judged this criticism to have been incorrect, since, while Lochner influenced a ruling whose imprint still remains, individuals' freedom of contract is not deemed limited by reasonable laws to protect workers' health and safety.

The passage suggests that, if the rulings expressed in the highlighted text were used as the basis for judging relevant labor issues, which of the following would be true?

Review: Lochner v. New York II


Explanation

This question points us to the rationale for Lochner. As it happens, we just decided and learned from the last question that "Locher reasserted an individual's right to enter freely into contracts." And, as it turns out, this question asks us to focus on the lines which include that same portion of the passage. This is a completely realistic example of how you can "sharpen as you go" in Reading Comprehension. Lochner is all about defending the right to enter freely into contracts. Let's take that nugget of wisdom and see how far it gets us with the answer choices. Choice (B) is irrelevant and somewhat opposite to the point. Choice (D) and Choice (A) are both out of the scope of the question, since we can't go so far to conclude about other types of contracts, or all previous contracts. That leaves us with (C) and (E), both of which involve contracts. Both step somewhat beyond what is obvious in lines 5-19. Choice (C) mentions safety, which doesn't appear in the passage explicitly until the very end of the passage. That sentence says that the basis of Lochner and protecting health and safety are different. This implies that protecting health and safety was contrary to Lochner. Therefore, answer (C) would appear to be correct. We do know, after all, that Lochner was aggressive in protecting individuals' right to contract. Given that, does (E) have an objective error? Choice (E) is, in fact, contrary to the ruling of Lochner, as it has been described to us, because requiring a maximum number hours of work per week could be seen as setting limits on what workers can agree to.

The correct answer is (C).


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