Lochner era

The Lochner era is a period in American legal history in which the Supreme Court of the United States tended to strike down laws held to be infringing on economic liberty or private contract rights.^[1][2] The beginning of the period is usually considered to be the Court's decision in Allgeyer v. Louisiana (1897) with the end marked forty years later by the overturning of a prior Lochner era decision in the case of West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937).^[3] The Lochner era coincided roughly with the Second Industrial Revolution.

The Supreme Court during the Lochner era has been described as "play[ing] a judicially activist but politically conservative role."^[4] The Court invalidated state and federal legislation that inhibited business or otherwise limited the free market, including laws on minimum wage, child labor, regulations of banking, insurance and transportation industries.^[4] Originating in the late 19th century, the Lochner era carried into the mid-1930s, when the Court's tendency to invalidate labor and market regulations came into direct conflict with Congress' regulatory efforts to bring about economic recovery as part of the New Deal.