After reading this intriguing post regarding early 20th century constitutional law the question I keep asking myself if the Supreme Court would have changed its mind about "freedom of contract" if the Great Depression never happened. Noticeably, for years the court had make it seem like both workers and big companies were on equal footing, making it seem like workers facing starvation had the same freedom to "negotiate" like the corporate powers in that day and age. Once the Great Depression showed how absurd that thought process is , showing how "liberty of conduct" actually meant taking any job that comes your way or seeing your family starve, this fictional legal ideology collapsed through all this suffering. So, I am wondering if it is the judicial philosophy that changed Nebbia v. New York or the reality of the economy that became too loud to ignore. The Constitution did not fundamentally change - but the thought processes of the Country did - which, in a way could be a reckoning in itself?
Funny, I was contemplating something very similar to this just yesterday.
One possibility is that the Depression exposed why the Lochner judicial philosophy was wrong. Another is that it pushed the justices to interpret the Constitution with more compassion and pragmatism.
The bigger lesson here: the meaning of the Constitution isn’t shaped only by legal theory; it’s also shaped by what people are going through. And when real-life suffering gets too big to ignore, even long-standing legal ideas can fall apart.
After reading this intriguing post regarding early 20th century constitutional law the question I keep asking myself if the Supreme Court would have changed its mind about "freedom of contract" if the Great Depression never happened. Noticeably, for years the court had make it seem like both workers and big companies were on equal footing, making it seem like workers facing starvation had the same freedom to "negotiate" like the corporate powers in that day and age. Once the Great Depression showed how absurd that thought process is , showing how "liberty of conduct" actually meant taking any job that comes your way or seeing your family starve, this fictional legal ideology collapsed through all this suffering. So, I am wondering if it is the judicial philosophy that changed Nebbia v. New York or the reality of the economy that became too loud to ignore. The Constitution did not fundamentally change - but the thought processes of the Country did - which, in a way could be a reckoning in itself?
Funny, I was contemplating something very similar to this just yesterday.
One possibility is that the Depression exposed why the Lochner judicial philosophy was wrong. Another is that it pushed the justices to interpret the Constitution with more compassion and pragmatism.
The bigger lesson here: the meaning of the Constitution isn’t shaped only by legal theory; it’s also shaped by what people are going through. And when real-life suffering gets too big to ignore, even long-standing legal ideas can fall apart.