|
''Lochner v. New York'', , was a landmark United States Supreme Court case that held that "liberty of contract" was implicit in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The case involved a New York law that limited the number of hours that a baker could work each day to ten, and limited the number of hours that a baker could work each week to 60. By a 5–4 vote, the Supreme Court rejected the argument that the law was necessary to protect the health of bakers, deciding it was a labor law attempting to regulate the terms of employment, and calling it an "unreasonable, unnecessary and arbitrary interference with the right and liberty of the individual to contract." ''Lochner'' is one of the most controversial decisions in the Supreme Court's history, giving its name to what is known as the ''Lochner'' era. In the ''Lochner'' era, the Supreme Court issued several controversial decisions invalidating federal and state statutes that sought to regulate working conditions during the Progressive Era and the Great Depression. During the quarter-century that followed ''Lochner'', the Supreme Court also began to use the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to protect rights like freedom of speech and the right to send one's child to private school (which was the beginning of the line of cases that found a right to privacy in the Constitution). The ''Lochner'' era ended with ''West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish'' (1937), in which the Supreme Court took an expansive view of the government's power to regulate commercial activities. ==Facts== In 1895, the New York Legislature unanimously enacted the Bakeshop Act, which regulated sanitary conditions in bakeries and also prohibited individuals from working in bakeries for more than ten hours per day or sixty hours per week. In 1899, Joseph Lochner, owner of Lochner's Home Bakery in Utica, was indicted on a charge that he violated the Section 110 of Article 8, Chapter 415, of the Laws of 1897, in that he wrongfully and unlawfully permitted an employee working for him to work more than sixty hours in one week. Lochner was fined $25. For a second offense in 1901, Lochner drew a fine of $50 from the Oneida County Court. Lochner chose to appeal his second conviction. However, the conviction was upheld by the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court in a 3–2 vote. Lochner appealed again to the New York Court of Appeals, where he lost by a 4-3 margin. After his defeat in the Court of Appeals (New York's highest court), Lochner took his case to the Supreme Court of the United States. Lochner's appeal was based on the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which provides: "... nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." In a series of cases starting with ''Dred Scott v. Sandford'' (1857), the Supreme Court established that the Due Process Clause (found in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments) is not merely a procedural guarantee, but also a substantive limitation on the type of control the government may exercise over individuals. Although this interpretation of the Due Process Clause is a controversial one (see substantive due process), it had become firmly embedded in American jurisprudence by the end of the 19th century. Lochner argued that the right to freely contract was one of the rights encompassed by substantive due process. Scholars have noted that when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted in 1868, 27 out of 37 state constitutions had Lockean Provisos, which typically said: "All men are by nature free and independent, and have certain inalienable rights, among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring and possessing and protecting property: and pursuing and obtaining safety and happiness." As such clauses were "deeply rooted in American history and tradition," they likely informed the original meaning of the scope and nature of the fundamental rights protected by the Fourteenth Amendment in the eyes of Lochner-era justices. The Supreme Court had accepted the argument that the due process clause protected the right to contract seven years earlier, in ''Allgeyer v. Louisiana'' (1897). However, the Court had acknowledged that the right was not absolute, but subject to the "police power" of the states. For example, in ''Holden v. Hardy'' (1898), the Supreme Court upheld a Utah law setting an eight-hour work day for miners. In ''Holden'', Justice Henry Brown wrote that while "the police power cannot be put forward as an excuse for oppressive and unjust legislation, it may be lawfully resorted to for the purpose of preserving the public health, safety, or morals." The issue facing the Supreme Court in ''Lochner v. New York'' was whether the Bakeshop Act represented a reasonable exercise of the state's police power. Lochner's case was argued by Henry Weismann (who had been one of the foremost advocates of the Bakeshop Act when he was Secretary of the Journeymen Bakers' Union). In his brief, Weismann decried the idea that "the treasured freedom of the individual ... should be swept away under the guise of the police power of the State." He denied New York's argument that the Bakeshop Act was a necessary health measure, claiming that the "average bakery of the present day is well ventilated, comfortable both summer and winter, and always sweet smelling." Weismann's brief contained an appendix providing statistics showing that bakers' mortality rates were comparable to that of white collar professionals. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Lochner v. New York」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|