Lochner v. New York VII

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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, as of the time of the ruling on West Coast Hotel v. Parrish, pressures placed upon workers that are not strictly related to working hours are

Review: Lochner v. New York VII


Explanation

This question asks us for an inference. The correct answer could hit on a point that is central to the message of the passage, or it could appear to come from nowhere. We can evaluate the answer choices based on the main idea. Namely, the point of West Coast was that the Court decided that it could restrict working hours, since it had all along been reasonably restricting workers' contracts for their protection. (A), (B), and (C) are all contrary to that basic point. (D) is plausible, but unsupported. Choice (E) must be correct, because if it's not, it will generate an inconsistency with the passage. The point of Justice Roberts was that constraints such as usury had existed prior West Coast, and he was referring to these constraints as evidence, not attacking them. Therefore, pressures such as usury were indeed "subject to constraint through legislation."

The correct answer is (E). Passage 11








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