David Bernstein | 3.16.2024 7:04 PM

[The material below was originally posted at the Balkinization blog, for the Balkinization symposium on Robert Post, The Taft Court: Making Law for a Divided Nation, 1921–1930 (Cambridge University Press, 2024).]

In this symposium, my designated task was to review and discuss Part V of Robert Post, The Taft Court: Making Law for a Divided Nation, 1921–1930 (Cambridge University Press, 2024) This Part delves into social and economic legislation during the Taft Court era. This section is notably well-crafted, showcasing Professor Post's erudition and extensive research, and is a significant contribution to the relevant literature. However, I do not entirely agree with Post's interpretation of the cases he discusses.

Post's narrative heavily leans on the overarching theme that the Supreme Court in the 1920s participated in a society-wide desire for a "return to normalcy." This shift followed the substantial and unprecedented government intervention in civic and economic life accompanying the United States' entry into World War I. The experience with an expansive government during the war heightened American skepticism towards statist progressive ideas that had become dominant before the conflict.

Additionally, many Americans were repelled by the wholehearted support that numerous progressives had shown for the new federal wartime Leviathan and their desire to make it a permanent fixture. Post cites a letter from William Allen White as an illustration of the "innocent confidence of progressives."

I think the big thing to do now is quietly organize a hundred or so fellows who are dependable and who may take such steps as are necessary after the war to serve all the economic and social campaigns that the war brings to us. I think price fixing should be permanent, but not done by Wall Street. I think the government should tighten its control either into ownership or operation of the railroads. I think that labor arbitration should be a permanent thing, and that we should federalize education through universal training, making it a part of the system of education.

To many Americans in the post-war era, this attitude would not have appeared "innocent." Instead, it likely appeared as if enthusiastic supporters of a federal government exerting control over the economy, including regulating wages and prices nationwide, had revealed progressives' true intentions. Contrary to their pre-war claims of seeking significant reform within the existing system, it seemed they actually sought radical, even revolutionary, changes to the American economy and government system.

In the portion of the book I was tasked with reviewing and commenting on, Post overlooks the additional influence of events in Europe on this dynamic. The fact that European nations had become entangled in a brutal war without a clear purpose seemed to affirm America's superiority to Europe. Both in the past and today, many progressives looked to Europe as a model for their more interventionist and nationalist government policies. The emergence of the USSR, Communist revolutions in Germany and Hungary, and the sympathy expressed for Communism and anarchism in the US, especially among immigrants, heightened the apprehension of foreign ideas, including progressive concepts associated with Continental thinkers.

The theme of a "return to normalcy" provides a crucial perspective on the Taft Court era, especially considering President Harding's successful 1920 campaign on that very platform. Harding's victory reflected widespread dissatisfaction with the war and its impact on what we now call civil and economic liberties. Notably, it was Harding who appointed the Justices who steered the court in a more libertarian direction during the 1920s.

The inclination toward a "return to normalcy," seeking a shift back to pre-War levels of government regulation, is a key factor in understanding the overall approach of the pre-Depression Taft Court. This desire is particularly evident in the Court's skepticism toward novel or contentious applications of government regulatory power.

The apprehension of government overreach, intensified by the government's actions during the war, contributed to the Court's effort to systematize its jurisprudence on the liberty of contract. Previously perceived as somewhat arbitrary and inconsistent, the Court aimed to provide clarity. In the case of Adkins v. Children's Hospital (1923), Justice George Sutherland outlined acceptable infringements on liberty of contract beyond traditional police power concerns. These included regulations related to rates and charges for businesses with a public interest, contracts for public work, payment of wages, and hours of labor for health and safety reasons. Sutherland emphasized that, aside from these exceptions, "freedom of contract is the general rule, and restraint the exception," justifiable only in exceptional circumstances.

Looking more broadly, instances of perceived government overreach during World War I shed light on why the Supreme Court was willing to resurrect and broaden doctrines limiting government power that appeared to have been overshadowed by the progressive movement. Traditionalist conservative Justices advocating natural rights notions had no representation on the Taft Court after 1911. Law review commentary in the 1920s that advocated limits on government authority was philosophically incoherence.

As extensively detailed by Barry Cushman, the Taft Court Justices typically labeled as "conservative" a held a spectrum of generally moderate but progressive political views before joining the Court. Barry Cushman, The Secret Lives of the Four Horsemen, 83 Va. L. Rev. 559, 559-60 (1997); see also Logan E. Sawyer III, Creating Hammer v. Dagenhart, 21 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 67, 88 (2012). Despite this, and likely in part in response to the significant expansion of government authority during the war, these Justices aimed to uphold traditional limitations on government power while largely accommodating the growth of progressive regulation. Conversely, their counterparts, including Justice Louis Brandeis, were more radical Progressives reluctant to concede that the Constitution imposed significant and judicially enforceable constraints on the scope of........

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