Economics and the Supreme Court
The Case of the Minimum Wage
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9256306 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Edward James McKenna, Diane Zannoni (Connecticut College), Diane Catherine Zannoni |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 69 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 189-210 |
| Publication date | 2011-06-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Review of Social Economy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0034-6764 • E-ISSN: 1470-1162 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00346764.2010.502828 |
| OpenAlex | W2086189403 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 19 |
In the United States, laissez-faire has been the policy advocated in good times, while social legislation has been called for during crises. One instance of this dichotomy concerns the transformation of the American understanding of minimum wage laws during the early 20th century. During this time, the view of minimum wage laws changed from one that viewed such laws as theft, to one that saw such laws as being required for distributional justness. We examine the legal-historical debate concerning whether the Supreme Court renounced its policy of laissez-faire individualism in its 1937 ruling finding the minimum wage law constitutional, arguing that it did not. We investigate the free market standard that the Court used to find minimum wage laws unconstitutional in 1923. We demonstrate how the economic conditions of the Depression, coupled with the development of economic theory, explain how the Court eventually found the minimum wage law constitutional
Constitutional right · Economics · Individualism · Laissez-faire · Legislation · Minimum wage · Political science · Supreme court · Wage · American History and Culture · Economic Theory and Institutions · Law · Political Economy and Marxism
Modern Corporation and Private Property
The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860
The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly
The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890–1916
The Economics of Imperfect Competition
John Bates Clark's Defense of Mandatory Arbitration and Minimum Wage Legislation
Rethinking the New Deal Court
Parasitic-Industries Analysis and Arguments for a Living Wage for Women in the Early Twentieth-Century United States
Laissez-Faire and Liberty
The Economic Theory of a Legal Minimum Wage
The Theory of Monopolistic Competition
American Constitutional Law
Publications of the American Economic Association
The Economics and Ethics of Minimum Wage Legislation
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |