A Class by Herself: Muller v. Oregon (1908)

Author(s):  
Nancy Woloch

This chapter assesses Muller v. Oregon (1908), its significance, and the law it upheld: Oregon's ten-hour law of 1903. Convicted of violating Oregon's law of 1903 that barred the employment of women in factories and laundries for more than ten hours a day, Curt Muller—the owner of a Portland laundry—challenged the constitutionality of the law, which he claimed violated his right of freedom to contract under the due process of the Fourteenth Amendment. On February 24, 1908, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the Oregon law. This decision marked a momentous triumph for progressive reformers and a turning point in the movement for protective laws. At the same time, by declaring woman “in a class by herself,” the Supreme Court embedded in constitutional law an axiom of female difference. The Muller decision thus pushed public policy forward toward modern labor standards and simultaneously distanced it from sexual equality.

1916 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 683-688
Author(s):  
Seba Eldridge

That final legislative authority in this country is lodged in the letter of a constitution that is amended with the greatest difficulty, and with a supreme court which is entirely independent of electoral control has become a commonplace of political discussion.To quote Professor Goodnow: “Acts of congress and of state legislatures are declared to be unconstitutional ‥‥ because they cannot be made to conform to a conception of the organization and powers of government which we have inherited from the eighteenth century;” and Dr. Blaine F. Moore: “If we may judge from the decisions based on the due process clause in the fourteenth amendment and applying to the States, the court has it in its power to make the similar clause in the fifth amendment cover practically all federal legislation dealing with new problems concerning which there are few or no precedents. If the court does make this entirely possible extension of its power, then the legislation dealing with the more recent and pressing questions is under the control of the popularly inaccessible justices of the supreme court.”Both these quotations are from studies published before the adoption of the sixteenth and seventeenth amendments, but they are only a little less true now than then, as an analysis of the history of those amendments will show.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dale Margolin Cecka

This article explores deficits in the statute, in light of constitutional law, other Virginia adoption and termination of parental rights statutes, and other states' codes and jurisprudence. Part II describes the history and practice of the statute. Part III describes the flaws of the statute, including Fourteenth Amendment violations and inherent conflicts of interest. Part IV calls for the revision of section 1202(H) based on recent precedent in which the Supreme Court of Virginia recognized the sanctity of the parent-child relationship and the state's interest in preserving it.


2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-148
Author(s):  
Endri Ismail

Penelitian ini berupaya memaparkan legalitas Qanun Aceh Nomor 6 Tahun 2014 tentang Hukum Jinayat (Qanun Jinayah) dalam konstruksi hukum tata negara Indonesia. Untuk menganalisis hal tersebut, penelitian ini akan meninjau legalitas Qanun Jinayah dari dua sudut pandang, yaitu formalitas pembentukan peraturan perundang-undangan dan konsep negara kesatuan. Qanun Jinayah menuai banyak perdebatan disebabkan kedudukannya sebagai peraturan daerah (perda) namun bermateri muatan pidana Islam (jinayah) yang sama sekali belum diatur dalam peraturan perundang-undangan di level nasional. Tahun 2015, Qanun Jinayah dilakukan uji materiil ke Mahkamah Agung oleh Perkumpulan Masyarakat Pembaharuan Peradilan Pidana (ICJR) namun permohonan uji materiil ini dinyatakan tidak dapat diterima dengan alasan prematur (belum waktunya). Analisis yuridis dari perspektif hukum ketatanegaraan ini penting dilakukan mengingat legalitas sebuah peraturan perundang-undangan menentukan validitas dan kekuatan berlakunya. Yuridical Analysis of the Legality of Qanun Aceh Number 6 Year 2014 on Jinayat Law This research attempts to describe the legality of Qanun Aceh Number 6 Year 2014 on Jinayat Law (Qanun Jinayah) in the construction of Indonesian constitutional law. To analyze it, this study will examine the legality of Qanun Jinayah from two perspectives, those are the formality of the formulation of legislation and the concept of a unitary state. Qanun Jinayah gets  a lot of debate because of its position as a Regional Regulation (Peraturan Daerah), but the material of Islamic criminal content (Jinayah) which has not been regulated in national legislation. In 2015, Qanun Jinayat is subjected to a judicial review to the Supreme Court by the Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (ICJR), but this petition is declared unacceptable on a premature reason (unspecified). Judicial analysis from the perspective of constitutional law is important to do due to the legality of a legislation determines the validity and strenght of the law.


Author(s):  
Gaudreault-DesBiens Jean-François ◽  
Poirier et Johanne

This chapter documents the evolution from a dualist—“watertight compartments”—conception of Canadian federalism, to one that must acknowledge an increased number of intergovernmental cooperative ventures. It first examines Canada’s fundamentally dualist federal architecture before looking at the empirical reality of cooperative federalism which frequently challenges this structural dualism. It then considers how the rise of cooperative federalism influenced the evolution of the interpretive doctrines underpinning the law of Canadian federalism. Finally, it analyses the normative strength and scope of cooperative federalism, concluding that the impact of cooperative federalism in Canadian constitutional law remains tamed by the dualist conception of federalism that still underlies the Supreme Court of Canada’s federalism case law.


Author(s):  
Donald W. Rogers

This chapter traces Hague’s appeal through the Third Circuit Court of Appeals into the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, showing how the Hughes court’s inner dynamics explain affirmation of the district court injunction. Observing flux in court personnel and law, the chapter shows that both courts embraced the contemporaneous civil liberties revolution by defending worker speech and assembly rights, but it reveals the Supreme Court as divided over constitutional logic. Justice Owen Roberts’s plurality opinion upheld speech and assembly rights under the Fourteenth Amendment privileges and immunities clause, Justice Harlan Fiske Stone’s concurrence incorporated the First Amendment into the Fourteenth Amendment due-process clause, and dissenters rejected federal jurisdiction. The ruling reflected the contentious evolution of civil liberties jurisprudence, not antiboss or labor law politics.


Author(s):  
G. Edward White

Of all the areas of twentieth-century constitutional jurisprudence, that of free speech has had the most dramatic transformation. From a state of insignificance, the First Amendment has been applied against the states in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and made the basis for invalidating restrictions on the expressive activities of political and religious minorities, corporations, contributors to political campaigns, and commercial advertisers.


2013 ◽  
Vol 39 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 298-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth E. Mermin ◽  
Samantha K. Graff

At the turn of the last century, allies of industry on the Supreme Court deployed a novel constitutional doctrine to thwart government regulations aimed at improving public health and safety. During the Lochner v. New York era, the Supreme Court discovered a right to “freedom of contract” in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment that advanced the “economic liberty” of businesses to conduct their affairs without government oversight. The newfound freedom of contract forbade, for example, public policies aimed at improving factory conditions by setting maximum working hours, forbidding child labor, or setting a minimum wage. The Court later somewhat abashedly changed course, finding that government in fact had great leeway to implement economic regulations protecting and promoting general welfare.Today, seventy-five years after the Supreme Court repudiated the doctrine of economic substantive due process, the Court has backtracked to the notion that the Constitution significantly impedes the government's ability to safeguard public health and safety by regulating commercial activities.


1910 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 483-497
Author(s):  
Eugene Wambaugh

It is indeed a substantial grist that the Supreme Court of the United States at the last term of court has ground for students of political science. The first opinion was delivered on November 1, 1909, and the last on May 31, 1910, and the court decided no less than sixty-five constitutional cases. Notice that with caution it is merely said that the court decided no less than that number; for it is often somewhat a matter of opinion whether a case should be classed as constitutional, and it may well be that there are readers who will find that the court exceeded sixty-five. And how were those sixty-five divided? Many turned on more constitutional points than one, and thus an enumeration of the cases bearing on the several clauses of the Constitution will reveal a total exceeding sixty-five. The enumeration, subject to amendment in accordance with each student's views, gives the following results: The Fourteenth Amendment, twenty-four cases; the Commerce Clause, twenty-one; the Obligation of Contracts Clause, eight; whether cases arise “under the laws of the United States,” eight; Full Faith and Credit Clause, five; and sixteen other clauses, from one to four cases each, aggregating twenty-seven.Through these dull figures some important facts shine distinctly. The Fourteenth Amendment and the Commerce Clause clearly took a vast part of the court's energy, and each of these provisions has to do with the curtailment of functions which prima facie belong to the several states. In other words, the chief feature of this term, as of every recent term, has been a more or less successful attempt of litigants to overthrow state statutes as denials of due process and equal protection or as interferences with interstate commerce.


2021 ◽  
pp. 17-34
Author(s):  
George Thomas

This chapter focuses on Justice Hugo Black, the most prominent modern advocate of constitutional textualism to sit on the Supreme Court, revealing the unwritten understandings that drive Black’s textualist jurisprudence. Justice Black was most famous for advocating that the Fourteenth Amendment applied to the Bill of Rights to the states. Black argued that the liberty protected by the due process clause included, and only included, rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Black was famous for his constitutional literalism, pointing to his pocket Constitution to ask where a right like “privacy” was found in the Constitution. Yet Black’s own interpretation relied on his desire to cabin and limit judicial will much more than on constitutional text. It was Black’s understanding of the role of the judiciary in a democracy—and not constitutional text—that drove his jurisprudence of incorporation.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document