The Supreme Court and Minimum Wage Legislation: Comment by the Legal Profession on the District of Columbia CaseNew Republic, Incorporated, 1925 - 287 pages |
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Amendment appear applied authority basis Bunting Chief Justice Taft Congress constitutional cost decision determine difference dissenting District of Columbia due process economic effect employed employer employment enactment equally established exercise existence fact favor Fifth fixing follows four freedom of contract give given ground held hold hours of labor individual industrial interest interference invalid involved judges judicial Justice Holmes Justice Sutherland justify legislation legislature less liberty limiting living Lochner majority matter maximum means ment method minimum wage morals Muller nature necessary opinion Oregon paid passed person police power prescribing principle protect question reasonable regulation relation rendered require respect restrictions result Review rule seems social standard statute supra Supreme Court sustained theory thought tion United validity vote woman women workers York
Popular passages
Page 247 - When, therefore, one devotes his property to a use in which the public has an interest, he, in effect, grants to the public an interest in that use, and must submit to be controlled by the public for the common good, to the extent of the interest he has thus created.
Page xiii - That government is, or ought to be instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community ; of all the various modes and forms of government, that is best which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety, and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration...
Page 104 - It is made for people of fundamentally differing views, and the accident of our finding certain opinions natural and familiar, or novel and even shocking, ought not to conclude our judgment upon the question whether statutes embodying them conflict with the Constitution of the United States.
Page 199 - But we think the sound construction of the constitution must allow to the national legislature that discretion, with respect to the means by which the powers it confers are to be carried into execution, which will enable that body to perform the high duties assigned to it, in the manner most beneficial to the people. Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist...
Page 64 - The right of a person to sell his labor upon such terms as he deems proper is, in its essence, the same as the right of the purchaser of labor to prescribe the conditions upon which he will accept such labor from the person offering to sell it.
Page 246 - There is, of course, no such thing as absolute freedom of contract. It is subject to a great variety of restraints. But freedom of contract is, nevertheless, the general rule and restraint the exception, and the exercise of legislative authority to abridge it can be justified only by the existence of exceptional circumstances.
Page 184 - This case is decided upon an economic theory which a large part of the country does not entertain. If it were a question whether I agreed with that theory, I should desire to study it further and long before making up my mind. But I do not conceive that to be my duty, because I strongly believe that my agreement or disagreement has nothing to do with the right of a majority to embody their opinions in law.
Page 246 - Included in the right of personal liberty and the right of private property — partaking of the nature of each— is the right to make contracts for the acquisition of property. Chief among such contracts is that of personal employment, by which labor and other services are exchanged for money or other forms of property. If this right be struck down or arbitrarily interfered with, there is a substantial impairment of liberty in the long-established constitutional sense.
Page 251 - Statutes of the nature of that under review, limiting the hours in which grown and intelligent men may labor to earn their living, are mere meddlesome interferences with the rights of the individual...
Page 245 - In all such particulars the employer and the employee have equality of right, and any legislation that disturbs that equality is an arbitrary interference with the liberty of contract which no government can legally justify in a free land.