as is well-known, during the so-called lockner era between the 1890s and the 1930s, the u.s. federal courts struck down as unconstitutional some 150 pieces of employee protection legislation under the due process clause. they did this on the grounds that liberty required absolute freedom of contract, subject only to limited considerations of public policy. among the laws which they struck down were state laws limiting hours of work in the interests of health, guaranteeing a 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 to abortion from the newly discovered constitutional right of privacy, and autonomy. the same reasoning in a sense lay behind the court's decision more recently about same-sex marriage in 2015. in both cases, the supreme court's decisions were necessarily based on the perception of the justices that this was what liberty now required. yet it seems likely that if the same issues had come for the first time be