Two recent Cato Institute books touched on the major 1905
Supreme Court decision, Lochner v. New York, which held that a
law setting maximum working hours for bakers violated the
constitutional right to liberty of contract. In The Right to
Earn a Living, Timothy Sandefur charted the history of that
fundamental human right, and showed how it was eroded by
Progressive Era judges. In Liberty of Contract, David Mayer
identified the foundations and nature of the Court’s Lochner era
legal theories and decisions and shattered the myths that
scholars have created about both this era and subject. Now, in a
book co-published by the Cato Institute and the University of
Chicago Press, David E. Bernstein adds a third part to this
series, presenting a new way of thinking about the Constitution
and the federal government’s delegated, enumerated, and thus
limited powers. Rehabilitating Lochner: Defending Individual
Rights against Progressive Reform offers an exacting study of
that notorious case and its impact on American la