Politics of administrative law

Politics of Administrative Law

An Examination of the Challenges Presented by NLRB vs. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. To the Political, Economic, and Legal Philosophies Developed from Munn vs. Illinois and Lochner vs. New York

As the 19th century drew to a close, the impact of the Industrial Revolution resulted in shifts in the social contract and witnessed the beginnings of the concentration of corporate power in the hands of big trusts and monopolies in the early 20th century. In response, the Supreme Court's decisions in several seminal cases served to shape the political, economic, and legal philosophies that resulted in NLRB vs. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. This paper will provide a background and overview of the cases involved, followed by an examination of how the legal consciousness of NLRB vs. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. challenged the Court's previous positions as exemplified in Munn vs. Illinois and Lochner vs. New York. A summary of the research will be provided in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

Background and Overview. The concept of judicial was certainly not new by any stretch of the imagination when the Supreme Court decided NLRB vs. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. In 1937; however, the decision in this case represented an important continuation of the principles first established by Marbury vs. Madison in 1803. The evolution of how the Court responded to the demands resulting from a changing and rapidly growing American marketplace, with states' interests weighing in against national ones, resulted in Munn v. Illinois (1876) in which the Court looked to the common law for the category of businesses "affected with a public interest." According to Stedfast (1999), Munn represents an early example of a private business owner bringing a claim of unconstitutional regulation to court and a discussion by the United States Supreme Court of the police powers and their source. "In Munn v. Illinois, the state court had found that Munn had operated a public warehouse without a license in violation of an Illinois statute" (Stedfast 1999:881). Following the state court's judgment in the case, Munn argued that the statute (which required licenses as part of a regulatory scheme to fix maximum prices for the storage of grain in warehouses) was unconstitutional. The resulting court case was ultimately appealed to the United States Supreme Court. At that point, Munn asserted, among other provisions, that the Illinois statute violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause.

The Court held that the General Assembly of Illinois had committed no violation of the U.S. Constitution by its enactment of the regulatory statute and provided the following two bases for its decision: 1) the police powers, and 2) the public nature of Munn's business. Concerning police powers, the Court looked to the formation of the United States and noted that the people granted to the government the power to act "as they deemed necessary for the common good and the security of life and property." Consequently, "[w]hen one becomes a member of society, he necessarily parts with some rights or privileges which, as an individual not affected by his relations to others, he might retain." Citing the maxim of sic utere tuo ut alienum non-laedus ("use your own so as not to harm others"), the Court reasoned that the issue of regulatory statutes by stating that the social compact "authorize[s] the establishment of laws requiring each citizen to so conduct himself, and so use his own property, as not unnecessarily to injure another." The Court also concluded that it was this social compact which provided the source and basis for the federal police powers; it was pursuant to these police powers that the government was authorized to regulate how individuals acted toward one another and how they used their property. The Court further noted the existence of many regulatory statutes, none of which had been adjudicated to be in violation of "constitutional prohibitions against interference with private property" Munn v. Illinois, 94 U.S. 113, 124 (1876).

In Lochner v. New York (1905), the Court looked to, among other things, the common law contract doctrine of incapacity (Brauneis 1996). According to Brauneis,.".. practitioners of Lochner-era ahistoricism relied on a willingness to undertake some independent investigation of a statute's purposes" (1996:613). In this regard, the proclamation in Lochner serves to summarize the rationale of the day:

The purpose of a statute must be determined from the natural and legal effect of the language employed; and whether or not it is repugnant to the Constitution of the United States must be determined from the natural effect of such statutes when put into operation and not from their proclaimed purpose (Munn v. Illinois, 94 U.S. 113, 124, 1876).

With the New Deal, though, President Roosevelt and Congress began to increasingly test the Court's standards and judicial limits by enacting laws that stretched previous boundaries of the commerce power to their absolute limits (Scott 2003). In NLRB vs. Jones & Laughlin Steel, the Court joined the President and Congress by dropping the "direct effects" test for a "close and substantial relation to interstate commerce" test. "This newly expanded test enabled Congress to regulate even wholly intrastate activities provided they had at least a "close and substantial relation to interstate commerce" (Scott 2003:753).

In NLRB vs. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., Chief Justice Hughes delivered the opinion of the Court. The NLRB had determined Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. ("Jones") violated the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 by firing employees at its Aliquippa, Pennsylvania plant who had engaged in union activities. It ordered reinstatement and other relief. The court of appeals refused to enforce the Supreme Court's orders because it maintained the matter was not subject to federal jurisdiction. The Supreme Court reversed. The legal question in this case was whether the labor matter was in fact subject to federal intervention, with the ultimate decision being it was.