Professors Roderick Hills and David Bernstein Debate the Lochner Era

Does the Constitution protect freedom of contract? Lochner v. New York is the since-overruled 1905 Supreme Court decision which held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects "liberty of contract." 

Roderick Hills

William T. Comfort, III Professor of Law at NYU Law School

debates 

David E. Bernstein

George Mason University Foundation Professor at the George Mason University School of Law and Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute

Bernstein, the author of Rehabilitating Lochner: Defending Individual Rights Against Progressive Reform, argues that Lochner was well grounded in precedent—and that modern constitutional jurisprudence owes at least as much to the limited-government ideas of Lochner proponents as to the more expansive vision of its Progressive opponents. 

Hills will defend the academic and judicial consensus that Lochner was wrongly decided. 

Time:  Tuesday, 9/17 at 4pm

Location: Vanderbilt Hall 210

Refreshments will be served.

RSVP here. 

Sponsored by The Federalist Society and The American Constitution Society