Lochner v. New York

More than a century later, Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905), remains a notorious symbol of the Supreme Court of the United States discarding constitutional interpretation for personal ideology.

The case dealt with a challenge to a New York state law limiting the number of hours bakers could work to 60 per week. Justice Peckham, writing for the majority, struck down the regulation as an unjustified infringement of the right to contract, considered part of the liberty protected by substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court found no special reason for protecting bakers in this manner ("They are in no sense wards of the State.") and disclaimed the State's evidence of health concerns. The Court also suggested that such concerns provided a mere pretext for anti-business ideologies to become law.

Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented, arguing that the State had ample reason to legislate in this area, quoting at length from studies describing the respiratory ailments and other risks that bakers faced. Harlan preferred that the Court defer to the judgment of legislatures in areas such as this where courts lacked competence.

However, it is Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' dissent that is most remembered, for its biting accusation that the justices in the majority were merely employing their personal views of economic laissez faire to strike down reasonable laws passed by elected lawmakers. "Some of these laws embody convictions or prejudices which judges are likely to share. Some may not. But a constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory[.]" Holmes also took issue with substantive due process, seeing it as an empty concept that allowed judges to capriciously thwart democratic decision making.

Though not absolute in invalidating economic and labor regulations, the Court still regularly struck down such laws (often under a narrow view of the commerce clause) until the late 1930's, when the "Lochner" era is considered to have ended with West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, which upheld a state minimum wage statute. Substantive due process has been criticized as leading to abuse of judicial discretion, but the doctrine has continued to be used by the Court to recognize rights in the areas of family, marriage, procreation, and sexuality.