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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
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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References
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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.
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