as is well known, during the so- called lochner era of the 1890s and 1930s, the court struck down as unconstitutional some 150 pieces of employee protection legislation under the due process clause. they did this on the grounds that liberty requires absolute freedom of contract, subject only to limited considerations of public policy. among the laws that they struck down state laws limiting hours of work in the interests of health, guaranteeing the right to join unions, and outlawing child labor. moving to the opposite extreme, the due process clause was also the basis of the decision in roe and wade in 1973 the u.s. supreme court derived a right of the abortion. it was from the newly discovered constitutional right of privacy and autonomy. the same reasoning, in a sense, lay behind the courts decision more recently about same-sex marriage in 2015. in both cases the supreme court's decisions were unnecessarily based on the perception of the justices. this is what liberty now requires, yet it seems likely that if the same issues had come for the first time before the court as it is no

in 1905, the court hears a case called lochner versus new york, involving whether new york can regulate the hours of baker's for health and safety reasons. and the court in a dramatic 5-4 decision, says the new york law is unconstitutional because the bakers in new york have a constitutional right, a right of contract, tort for as many hours as they choose. the bakery owners have a constitutional right to offer work to bakers who want to work more. the limit was 60 hours a week. bakere court said, if a wants to work 65 hours a week, that baker should have that right and the owner should have the right to hire him for 65 hours a week. that is the constitutional right of contract. but three years later, when berea college says, we should have the constitutional right to contract with black-and-white students to take courses at our school, and african-americans and white americans that should have the right to contract with the college to go to an integrated school, suddenly the court has forgotten lochner and says, no, the state has a right to regulate race relations as it wants. almost w