Lochner v. New York VI

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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 primary purpose of the passage is to

Review: Lochner v. New York VI


Explanation

We should summarize before looking at the answer choices, even if our summary is inelegant. The purpose of this passage is to describe a series of court rulings that involve worker's rights and the protection of workers. There were some aspects that were overturned with time, and some influences that outlived the specific rulings. Let's look for something like that in the answer choices. Choice (A) sounds right in "trace the development," but off target in "due process" and in the gender focus, which are not the primary focus. Choice (B) is slightly suspect in that it mentions the present-day situation, which is not described in the passage, but it's correct in focusing on worker's rights, and there is some discussion of the legacy of these rulings, so (B) may be correct. (C) is out, because the passage doesn't "question" anything; we don't have that degree of opinion. (D) is out, because we haven't learned a precise date of worker's rights; it was a gradual process. Choice (E) is out, since the passages talk almost exclusively about one type of protection, that against excessive working hours.

The correct answer is (A).


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