Teaching the Lochner Era

Abstract

This article, prepared for the St. Louis University Law Journal's issue on “Teaching the Fourteenth Amendment,” develops a taxonomy of the Supreme Court's economic substantive due process jurisprudence during the so-called “Lochner Era” of the late-19th and early-20th centuries, and offers an assessment of the trajectory and mechanisms of the decline of that body of doctrine.

Keywords: Lochner Era, Lochner v. New York, switch-in-time, substantive due process, Nebbia v. New York, West Coast Hotel v. Parrish, liberty of contract, A-to-B laws, price regulation, rate regulation, minimum wage, Lochner revisionism

JEL Classification: K30