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Laissez-Faire and Liberty: A Re-Evaluation of the Meaning and Origins Of Laissez-Faire Constitutionalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2011

Michael Les Benedict
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Extract

Until recently, historians of American constitutionalism agreed that, except for the infamous Dred Scott decision, the most unfortunate decisions of the Supreme Court were those that incorporated the notion of laissez-faire into the Constitution in the late nineteenth century. These decisions permitted the Court to frustrate efforts to secure a more just economic order in the United States until the 1930s. The intellectual foundations of laissez-faire constitutionalism have been so alien to most legal scholars since the 1930s (and equally unintelligible to many even earlier) that they have found it difficult to believe these decisions were the result of efforts to enforce ‘neutral’ principles of constitutional law, to utilize the terms of Herbert Wechsler's famous analysis. They could not conceive of the Court's rhetoric about liberty and due process as anything but cant, a subterfuge designed to camouflage other purposes.

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Articles
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Law and History Review , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , Fall 1985 , pp. 293 - 331
Copyright
Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 1985

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References

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43. Juillard v. Greenman, 110 U.S. 421 (1884).

44. Stone v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Co., 116 U.S. 307, 329–30 (1886); Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Ry. Co. v. Minn., 134 U.S. 418 (1890).

45. See, for example, Lochner v. N.Y., 198 U.S. 45 (1905), which overturned a state regulation of bakery workers' hours on the grounds that it could not be justified as a protection of health or safety. The majority of the justices sustained similar regulation of other industries in Holden v. Hardy, 169 U.S. 366 (1898) and Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908) when such a justification could be made out.

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90. Judson, Crisis of the Constitution, supra note 87 at 278, 290–92; Davies, The Early Stuarts, supra note 86 at 24–25; Foster, Elizabeth Read, ‘The Procedure of the House of Commons Against Patents and Monopolies’, in Aiken, William Appleman, ed.. Conflict in Stuart England: Essays in Honor of Wallace Notestein (New York, 1960) 57Google Scholar; Unwin, Gilds and Companies of London, supra note 85 at 293–343; Cunningham, Growth of English Commerce, supra note 86 at 218; Select Charters, supra note 85, at lxii–lxxxi. White, Stephen D., Sir Edward Coke and ‘The Grievances of the Commonwealth’, 1621–1628 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1979) 95–141Google Scholar.

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93. Richard Martin, A Speech Delivered to the King's Most Excellent Majestie, quoted in Judson, Crisis of the Constitution, supra note 87 at 41. Of course with the emergence of parliamentary supremacy at the end of the seventheenth century, Parliament was able to grant monopolies, and it did so regularly to promote trade. Nonetheless this had to be justified on the grounds that the public received a benefit and therefore the grant increased rather than diminished the commonwealth. Cunningham, Growth of English Commerce, supra note 86 at 214–18 passim.

94. See generally Robbins, Caroline, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman: Studies in the Transmission, Development and Circumstance of English Liberal Thought from the Restoration of Charles II until the War with the Thirteen Colonies (New York, 1968Google Scholar; originally published 1959); Banning, Lance, The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology (Ithaca, N.Y. 1978) 21–69Google Scholar.

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97. Ibid, at 92.

98. Goodman, Paul, ‘The First American Party System’, in Chambers, William N. and Burnham, Walter Dean, eds., The American Party System: Stages of Political Development (New York, 1967) 56–89Google Scholar, 69.

99. Madison, James, ‘A Candid State of Parties’, in Hunt, Gaillard, ed., The Writings of James Madison (New York, 1900–1910) vi, 176–79Google Scholar. Recent studies of the Jeffersonian Republican party at the state level suggest that it was ‘a diverse coalition… against entrenched interests… who thwarted the desires of newcomers and outsiders, rising merchants and ambitious office seekers, religious dissenters and landless yeomen eager to share access to authority and to broaden social opportunities’. They perceived the Federalists to stand ‘for monopoly of local office, charter privileges… and the religious, institutional and professional life of the community’. Goodman, Paul, The Democratic-Republicans of Massachusetts: Politics in a Young Republic (Cambridge, Mass., 1964) xi, 76CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Thus their opposition to special privileges secured through legislation was part of a general attack upon ‘aristocracy’. See ibid, at 70–127; Buel, Richard Jr., Securing the Revolution: Ideology in American Politics, 1789–1815 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1972) 77–90Google Scholar. This understanding is implicit, I think, in Lance Banning's notion that the Jeffersonian Republicans were a ‘country party’ opposing what they saw as a ‘court party’. Banning, Jeffersonian Persuasion, supra note 95.

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101. See Grampp, William D., ‘A Re-Examination of Jeffersonian Economies’, Southern Economic Journal xii (1946) 263–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bruchey, Stuart, The Roots of American Economic Growth (New York, 1965) 114–22Google Scholar; Williams, William Appleman, The Contours of American History (Cleveland, 1961) 181–91Google Scholar; Wiltse, Charles M., The Jeffersonian Tradition in American Democracy (New York, 1960; first published in 1935) 145–50Google Scholar.

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103. Stephen J. Field read law in the office of his brother, Field, David Dudley. Swisher, Carl Bent, Stephen J. Field, Craftsman of the Law (Chicago, 1969; originally published in 1930) 21Google Scholar. For the influence of Leggett and other radical Democrats on Cooley, see Jones, ‘Cooley and “Laissez-Faire Constitutionalism”’, supra note 16 at 753; Jones, , ‘The Constitutional Conservatism of Thomas McIntyre Cooley: A Study in the History of Ideas’ (Unpublished dissertation, University of Michigan, 1960) 20–26Google Scholar.

104. Jones, ‘Cooley and “Laissez-Faire Constitutionalism”’, supra note 16 at 755.

105. Sedgwick, Theodore, ed., Political Writings of William Leggett (New York, 1840), i, 66–67Google Scholar.

106. Ibid. 145.

107. Godwin, Parke, The Life of William Cullen Bryant (New York, 1883) i, 253–54Google Scholar.

108. Messages and Papers of the Presidents, supra note 102 at ii, 590. For Jacksonian hostility to privilege and commitment to equal rights, see Meyers, MarvinThe Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics and Belief (New York, 1960) 185–233Google Scholar; Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr., The Age of Jackson (Boston, 1945) 306–21Google Scholar. However, Schlesinger's argument that Jacksonism was a working-class movement is untenable. Jacksonians opposed class legislation of any sort, not only that which benefitted the wealthy.

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110. Joshua F. Cox, quoted in Hartz, Louis, Economic Policy and Democratic Thought: Pennsylvania, 1776–1860 (Cambridge, Mass., 1948) 77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

111. Ibid. For political controversies in which competitors used the rhetoric of ‘equal rights’ and ‘special privileges’, see Van Deusen, Glyndon G., ‘Some Aspects of Whig Thought and Theory in the Jacksonian Period’, American Historical Review lxiii (1958) 305–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Benson, Lee, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case (Princeton, N.J., 1961) 86–109Google Scholar; Handlin and Handlin, Commonwealth, supra note 95, at 182–228 (the Handlins do not discuss the relationship of the breakdown in commonwealth ideas to parties but recognize the consequent drive against ‘special privilege’); Sharp, James R., The Jacksonian versus the Banks: Politics in the State After the Panic of 1837 (New York, 1970)Google Scholar; Levine, Peter D., Behavior of State Legislative Parties in the Jacksonian Era: New Jersey, 1829–1844 (Rutherford, N.J., 1977) 112–78Google Scholar.

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113. Va. Const. (1776), Bill of Rights, sec. 4; N. C. Const. (1776), Dec. of Rights, sec. 3; Ky. Const. (1792), art. XII; Miss. Const. (1817), art. I, sec. 1; Ala. Const. (1819), art. I, sec. 1; Tex. Const. (1845), art. I, sec. 2.

114. N.H. Const. (1784), art. I, sec. 10. See also Pa. Const. (1776), Dec. of Rights, art. V; Vt. Const. (1777), Dec. of Rights, art. VI.

115. N.C. Const. (1776), Dec. of Rights, sec. 22; S.C. Const. (1776), art. IX, sec. 5; N.H. Const. (1784), art. I, sec. 9; Pa. Const. (1790), art. IX, sec. 24; Ky. Const. (1792), art. XII; Del. Const. (1792), art. I, sec. 19; Tenn. Const. (1796), art. XI, sec. 30; Ohio Const. (1802), art. VII, sec. 24; Ind. Const. (1816), art. I, sec. 22; Miss. Const. (1817), art. I, sec. 26; Conn. Const. (1818), art. I, sec. 20; Ala. Const. (1819), art. I, sec. 26; Me. Const. (1820), art. I, sec. 23; Mo. Const. (1820), art. XIII, sec. 20; Fla. Const. (1838), art. I, sec. 25; Md. Const. (1851), art. I, sec. 40; Kan. Const. (1859), art. I, sec. 19.

116. N.C. Const. (1776), Dec. of Rights, sec. 23; Tenn. Const. (1796), art. XI, sec. 23; Ark. Const. (1836), art. II, sec. 19; Fla. Const. (1838), an. I, sec. 24; Tex. Const. (1845), art. I, sec. 18; Md. Const. (1851), art. I, sec. 39.

117 Iowa Const. (1846), art. I, sec. 6; Ind. Const. (1851), art. XXIII; Ore. Const. (1857), art. I (Bill of Rights), sec. 21.

118. La. Const. (1845), art. CXXXIII; N.Y. Const. (1846), art. VIII, sec. 1,4; Ill. Const. (1848), art. X, sec. 1, (permitted exceptions at legislative discretion); Mich. Const. (1850), art. XV, sec. 1; Md. Const. (1851), art. III, sec. 47: Ohio Const. (1851), art. XIII (Corporations), sec. 1, 2; Minn. Const. (1857), art. X, sec. 2; Ore. Const (1857), art. XI (Corporations), sec. 2; Nev. Const. (1864), art. VIII, sec. 1; Mo. Const. (1865), art. VIII, sec. 4; Neb. Const. (1866), art. II (Corporations), sec. 1, 2; Ark. Const. (1868), art. I, sec. 48; S.C. Const. (1868), art. XII (Corporations), sec. 1; Tenn. Const. (1870), art. XI, sec. 8; W. Va. Const. (1872), art. XI, sec. 1.

119. Ill. Const. (1848), art. III, sec. 38; Pa. Const, (amended 1857), art. XI, sec. 5–7; Fla. Const. (1868), art. XIII, sec. 8; Ga. Const. (1868), art. III, sec. 6; Va. Const. (1870), art. X, sec. 12–15.

120. N.J. Const. (1844), art. VI, sec. 6(3); La. Const. (1845), art. CXXI; Ky. Const. (1850), art. II, sec. 33; Mich. Const. (1850), art. XIV, sec. 6, 8; Ohio Const. (1851), art. VIII, sec. 4; Minn. Const. (1857), art. IX, sec. 10; Mo. Const. (1865), art. XI, sec. 13; Miss. Const. (1868), art. XII, sec. 5.

121. Norwich Gas Light Co. v. Norwich City Gas Co., 25 Conn. 19 (1856)Google Scholar; California State Telegraph Co. v. Alta Telegraph Co., 22 Cal. 398 (1863)Google Scholar; City of Memphis v. Memphis Water Co., 5 Heisk. (52 Tenn.) 1495 (1871); State v. Milwaukee Gaslight Co., 29 Wis. 454 (1872); Grant v. City of Davenport, 36 Iowa 396 (1873).

122. Beekman v. Saratoga and Schenectady R.R. Co., 3 Paige 45 (N.Y. Ch. 1831); Raleigh & Gaston R.R. v. Davis, 2 Dev. & Batt. 451 (N.C. 1837). See Scheiber, Harry N., ‘The Road to Munn: Eminent Domain and the Concept of Public Purpose in the State Courts’, in Fleming, Donald and Bailyn, Bernard, eds., Law in American History (Cambridge, Mass., 1971) 362–73Google Scholar.

123. Iowa ex rel. Burlington & Mo. R.R. Co. v. County of Wapello, 13 Iowa 388 (1862); People v. Twp. Bd. of Salem, 20 Mich. 452 (1870).

124. Corwin, Edward S., ‘The Basic Doctrine of American Constitutional Law’, 12 Michigan Law Review 247–76 (1914)Google Scholar. Besides Corwin's essays, the best discussions of the doctrine of vested rights are Haines, Charles Grove, ‘Judicial Review of Legislation and the Doctrine of Vested Rights and of Implied Limitations on Legislatures’, 2 Texas Law Review 257–90 (1924)Google Scholar; Mendelson, Wallace, ‘A Missing Link in the Evolution of Due Process’, 10 Vanderbilt Law Review 125–37 (1956)Google Scholar.

125. 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 386, at 388 (1798).

126. For example, Merrill v. Sherburne, 1 N.H. 199 (1818); Ogden v. Blackledge, 6 U.S. (2 Cranch.) 272 (1804); Dash v. Van Kleeck, 7 Johns. 477 (N.Y. 1811).

127. Corwin, ‘Basic Doctrine of American Constitutional Law’, supra note 124, at 248–55.

128. 7 Johns. 447, 500–512.

129. Ibid, at 493.

130. Quackenbush v. Danks, 1 Denio 128 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1845).

131. Ogden v. Sounders, 25 U.S. (12 Wheat.) 213 (1827).

132. Sharpless v. Mayor of Philadelphia, 21 Pa. 147, 169(1853). In a powerful dissent, one of Black's colleagues denied that a railroad subsidy was a ‘public use’ of tax money, arguing it was an unconstitutional instance of special legislation, in violation of the constitutional guarantee that one's property could be taken only by the judgment of one's peers or by the law of the land. The dissent, not recorded in the report, may be found in 2 American Law Register 85–112 (1853–1854)Google Scholar. The citation to the ‘law of the land’ clause of the Pennsylvania state constitution is ibid, at 105.

133. Beekman v. Saratoga & Schenectady R.R. Co., 3 Paige Ch. 45, 73 (N.Y. Ch. 1831). See the cases cited in Cooley, Thomas M., A Treatise on the Constitutional Limitations Which Rest Upon the Legislative Power of the States of the American Union, 3d ed. (Boston, 1874) 622Google Scholar.

134. People ex rel. Griffin v. Mayor of Brooklin, 9 Barb. 535, 548 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1850). See Diamond, Stephen, ‘The Death and Transfiguration of Benefit Taxation: Special Assessments in Nineteenth-Century America’, 12 Journal of Legal Studies 201–40, 214–18 (1983)Google Scholar, for a discussion of opposition to special assessments in New York in the 1830s and 1840s.

135. For the incorporation of the doctrine of vested rights into the concept of ‘due process of law’ before the Civil War, see especially Mendelson, ‘Missing Link’, supra note 124; Corwin, ‘Basic Doctrine of American Constitutional Law’, supra note 124 and Corwin, ‘The Doctrine of Due Process’, supra note 8 at 460 are very useful for the information they contain, but Corwin dismisses far too casually the degree to which ante-bellum lawyers and jurists had come to accept what we would recognize as a ‘substantive’ notion of due process.

136. Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 518, 557–58.

137. Westervelt v. Gregg, 12 N.Y. 202, 212 (1854).

138. This was true of the Dartmouth College case, where the newly elected Republican legislature of New Hampshire sought to replace the old, Congregationalist board of trustees with one drawn from the entire religious community. Richard N. Current, ‘The Dartmouth College Case’, in Garraty, ed., Quarrels That Have Shaped the Constitution, supra note 37, at 15–29; Stites, Francis W., Private Interest and Public Gain: The Dartmouth College Case, 1819 (Amherst, Mass., 1972) 12–38Google Scholar. In the famous Charles River Bridge case, 36 U.S. (11 Pet.) 420 (1837), Bostonians had sought to undermine the monopoly over bridge traffic between Harvard and Cambridge held by the Charles River Bridge Company, much of the stock of which was owned by Congregationalist Harvard University. Kutler, Stanley I., Privilege and Creative Destruction: The Charles River Bridge Case (Philadelphia, 1971) 18–34Google Scholar. Darling, Arthur B., ‘Jacksonian Democracy in Massachusetts, 1824–1848’, American Historical Review xxix (1924) 271–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In University v. Foy, 5 N.C. 58 (1805), perhaps the first decision to cite a ‘law of the land’ clause of a state constitution in overturning special legislation, Jeffersonian Republican legislators had repealed a land grant to the Episcopalian-dominated University of North Carolina. Broussard, James H., The Southern Federalists, 1800–1816 (Baton Rouge, La., 1978) 323–26Google Scholar.

139. By the outbreak of the Civil War the linkage had received judicial articulation in North Carolina, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, New York, and the Supreme Court of the United States. University v. Foy, 5 N.C. 58 (1805); Hoke v. Henderson, 15 N.C. 1 (1833); Vanzant v. Waddell, 10 Tenn. 270 (1829); Sheppard v. Johnson, 21 Tenn. 285 (1841); Sharpless v. Mayor of Philadelphia, 21 Pa. 147, 167 (1853); Taylor v. Porter, 4 Hill 140 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1843); Westervelt v. Gregg, 12 N.Y. 202 (1854); Bloomer v. McQuewan, 55 U.S. (24 How.) 539 (1852); Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393, 450 (1856). It had also been developed in Anonymous, ‘The Security of Private Property’, 1 American Law Magazine 318–47, 335ff. (1843).

140. See the cases, infra notes 147 and 148.

141. See the cases, infra notes 149 and 150.

142. See the cases, infra notes 155–157.

143. Lowell v. Boston, 110 Mass. 454 (1873).

144. See the cases, infra note 154.

145. See the cases, infra notes 158–160.

146. Toledo, Wabash, & Western Ry. Co. v. City of Jacksonville, 67 Ill. 37 (1873); Munn v. Illinois, 69 Ill. 80 (1873); Loan Association v. Topeka, 5 F. Cas. 737 (C.C.D. Kans. 1874) (No. 2734); Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R.R. v. Iowa, 5 F. Cas. 594 (C.C.D. Iowa 1875) (No. 2666).

147. Wynehamer v. New York, 13 N.Y. 378 (1856); Beebe v. State, 6 Ind. 501 (1855).

148. Lincoln v. Smith, 27 Vt. 328 (1854); Goddard v. Jacksonville, 15 Ill. 589 (1854); State v. Gallagher, 4 Gibbs 244 (Mich. 1856); Fisher v. McGuirr, 1 Gray 1 (Mass. 1854); State v. Paul, 5 R.I. 185 (1858).

149. State v. Noyes, 10 Foster 279 (N.H. 1855); Metropolitan Bd. of Health v. Heister, 37 N.Y. 661 (1868); Inhabitants of Watertown v. Mayo, 109 Mass. 315 (1872).

150. 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36 (1873).

151. Supplemental Brief for Plaintiffs, Fagan v. State of Louisiana [The Slaughterhouse Cases], Kurland, Philip B. and Casper, Gerhard, eds., Landmark Briefs and Arguments of the Supreme Court of the United States: Constitutional Law (Arlington, Va., 1975) vi, 580Google Scholar.

152. Brief for Plaintiffs, ibid. 537.

153. Slaughterhouse Cases, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 114–16, 118 (1873) (Bradley, dissenting).

154. Thompson v. Inhabitants of Pittston, 59 Me. 545, 556 (1871) (Dickerson concurring). See also Perkins v. Inhabitants of Milford, 59 Me. 315 (1871) and Freeland v. Hastings, 92 Mass. 570 (1865). The New Jersey courts decided that such laws did serve a public purpose and therefore did not amount to special, or class, legislation. But they clearly were troubled by the case and took pains to articulate the principle that ‘the power of taking one man's property and vesting it in another, is in no sense a legislative power; and… a law which attempted to do this under the name of a tax would be wholly unauthorized and void’. State, Wagner et al. v. Collector of Delaware, 31 N.J.L. 189, 195 (1865).

155. The Tidewater Co. v. Coster, 18 N.J.Eq. 518 (1866); State v. Mayor of Hoboken, 39 N.J.L. 291 (1873); State, Agens, Pros. v. Newark, 37 ibid, at 415 (1874).

156. People ex rel. Crowell v. Lawrence, 41 N.Y. 137 (1869).

157. Gordon v. Cornes, 47 N.Y. 608 (1872).

158. Opinion of the Justices, 58 Me. 590, 591 (1870).

159. Ibid, at 593–95.

160. Hansen v. Iowa, 27 Iowa 28 (1869). See also Allan v. Jay, 60 Me. 124 (1871); Lowell v. Boston, 110 Mass. 454 (1873); Weeks v. Milwaukee, 10 Wis. 342 (1860)); Curtis v. Whipple, 24 Wis. 350 (1869); Whiting v. Sheboygan and Fon du Lac R.R. Co., 25 Wis. 167 (1870); People v. Twp. Bd. of Salem, 20 Mich. 452 (1870).

161. Cooley, Constitutional Limitations, supra note 133 (1st edition published in 1868).

162. Jacobs, Clyde E., Law Writers and the Courts: The Influence of Thomas M. Cooley, Christopher G. Tiedeman, and John F. Dillon Upon American Constitutional Law (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1954) 27Google Scholar; Twiss, Benjamin R., Lawyers and the Constitution: How Laissez-Faire Came to the Supreme Court (Princeton, N.J., 1942)Google Scholar passim; Fine, Laissez-Faire and the General-Welfare State, supra note 9 at 128–29.

163. People v. Twp. Bd. of Salem, 20 Mich, at 487.

164. Twiss, Lawyers and the Constitution, supra note 162 at 18.

165. People v. Twp. Bd. of Salem, 20 Mich, at 486.

166. Dillion, , ‘Property—Its Rights and Duties in our Legal and Social Systems’, Proceedings of the New York State Bar Association xviii (1895) 33–64Google Scholar, 46.

167. Stone v. Farmer's Loan & Trust Co., 116 U.S. 307 (1886); Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Ry. Co. v. Minnesota, 134 U.S. 418 (1890).

168. 169 U.S. 466 (1898).

169. 165 U.S. 578 (1897). For examples of the traditional, Supreme Court-centered account, see Hamilton, ‘Path of Due Process’, supra note 8; Kelly, Harbison, and Belz, supra note 16 at 397–418.