TNR : The Supreme Court eventually repudiated the logic in Drexel Furniture, much as it did the logic of Lochner. Partly, the justices were reacting to popular sentiment (and, in some tellings, President Franklin Roosevelt's threats to pack the court with more sympathetic justices )

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History : When the U. S. Supreme Court defended all abuses of the Powerful against the Poor, Children, Blacks, etc .....because they considered that Governments should have very small powers and very little authority to regulate society and the economy.

The New Republic

Yes, Obama's Comments on the Court Made Sense

In Praise of the President's Understanding of Constitutional Law

By Jonathan Cohn

April 10, 2012


Yes, Obama's Comments on the Court Made Sense


Some excerpts :

But partly they were recognizing that the country really had changed: In the contemporary, integrated economy, government in general and the federal government in particular needed more regulatory authority in order to keep capitalism functioning and to protect citizens from harm.

Although at least some libertarians openly wish for a return to Lochner-era notions of economic liberty, many (and probably most) historians look back on the Lochner decisions as a blemish on the Court’s history, albeit for different reasons. That’s one reason why conservatives are so sensitive to Lochner references: Nobody wants that label. In fact, when a government lawyer raised the specter of Lochner during oral arguments over the health care law two weeks ago, Chief Justice John Roberts sternly made the very same point Taranto did: Lochner was about state regulation, not federal regulation.

But I'm pretty sure both Obama and his administration's lawyer were saying something different, and broader, when they invoked Lochner: By invalidating the Affordable Care Act, the Supreme Court would be resurrecting a vision of constitutionally limited government that, quite rightly, went out of fashion a long time ago.

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