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Actually, Bunting and Lochner can be distinguished because Bunting allowed workers to work more than the prescribed number of hours if they were paid overtime, while Lochner involved an absolute ban on working more than sixty hours. Thus, Lochner was a more serious infringement on liberty of contract.
In a message dated 10/30/2003 12:24:52 PM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
It is possible to distinguish Lochner and Bunting on the ground that the maximum hours law in Bunting applied generally to industrial workers while the law in Lochner applied to a small subset of workers (and thus represented the sort of "partial" or class legislation that was considered inconsistent with the police powers), but most commentators believed that Bunting trumped Lochner. (In his brief Frankfurter pleaded with the justices to disregard their "common understanding" of the dangers of long working hours in favor of "data that, partly, was not presented in cases like Lochner.") Professor David E. Bernstein
George Mason University School of Law http://mason.gmu.edu/~dbernste
blog: http://volokh.com/index.htm?bloggers=DavidB *********************************************** My latest book, You Can't Say That! The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Antidiscrimination Laws, has just been published *********************************************** |
