History of Substantive Due Process

In one case, arbiter Samuel Chase argued that legislative power is limited by the " nature and terms of the social compact" entered into by all members of a society. These criteria establish certain principles which cannot be violated by legislative acts. For instance, a law of nature cannot punish a person for an " detached action," one which was in violation of no existing law when it was committed; a law cannot destroy or debase the "lawful clubby contracts" of individuals; and a law cannot take property from one person and give it to another. Essentially, a legislature cannot " dislodge innocence into guilt; [or] violate the right of an antecedent private contract; or the right of private property." Such principles were considered to be rights vested through the social compact which underlies any society.

Although much(prenominal) a theory of vested rights was occasionally referred to in subsequent cases, those justices writing the opinions a great deal preferred to base the rights at issue on ad hoc provisions in the Constitution. Consequently, the idea of vested rights remained influential as a source of values which supported the explicit guarantees of Constitutional provisions, such as the contract clause. It did not, however, become a formal institution for the invalidation of legislative acts. It is ironic, in light of the subsequent reasons for the flight of the Fourteenth Amendment, that

Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905).

Chief Justice Roger Taney would mention in passing that a Congressional act which barred slavery in the territories disadvantaged a slave owner of his indecorum and property and then "could hardly be dignified with the name of imputable attend of law."

As can be seen, the Court's discussion of crucial due process immediately focused upon economic rights.

While a plain reading of the clause implicated personal liberty and procedural safeguards, especially with regard to criminal prosecution, the new material interpretation dwelt upon the protection of the long-cherished right to own property. Within this bigger liberty were the smaller rights concerning the disposition of such property. Especially important, in the eyes of the Court, was the right to enter into private contracts, including those of employment. A law prohibiting the employment of bakery workers for more than ten hours a twenty-four hours or sixty hours a week precipitated an expansive substantive due process protection of economic rights in 1905. In Lochner v. New York the Court struck down the New York law, verbalism that the law infringed upon the bakery owners' and workers' fundamental rights to enter into contracts of employment. By modulate the terms of employment contracts, both groups of persons were deprived of their property rights emanating from such contracts.

Warren, Charles. 2 The Supreme Court in United States level (rev. ed.). Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1926.

Calder v. Bull, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 386 (1798).

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