The law of the workplace

Because of the fragmented and piecemeal development of federal labor policy in the United States, US courts have had many places of entry to participate in workplace regulation. This is, at least in part, ironic. The initial ambition of Progressive Era legislators and activists to develop a federal labor policy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was to counter the ongoing activism of the Lochner era judges who were striking down federal and state statutes in order to defend a more unbridled capitalist economy. Both the federal government and a majority of state governments responded by passing labor and workplace statutes designed to check courtroom intervention and substitute regulation, administration, and arbitration over litigation. During the 1930s, the efforts of legislators to overcome judicial activism restricting labor rights reached an apex.