Elevating Competition: Classical Political Economy in Justice Peckham’s Jurisprudence

Nicola Giocoli

Journal of Contextual Economics (JCE) – Schmollers Jahrbuch, 2017, vol. 137, issue 4, 331-370

Abstract: This paper deals with the famous Lochner v. New York (1905) decision from the perspective of the history of economic thought. In »Lochner« the Supreme Court affirmed freedom of contract as a substantive constitutional right. It is argued that, in writing for the majority, Justice Rufus W. Peckham was heavily influenced by classical political economy. Not, however, in the trivial sense of endorsing pure laissez faire, but in the deeper sense of applying Adam Smith’s recipe for building a “system of natural liberty”, viz., a social order founded on justice, private property, and free competition. My interpretation is validated by looking at the economic content of Peckham’s jurisprudence as a judge in the New York Court of Appeals.

JEL-codes: B12 K21 L40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.3790/schm.137.4.331 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dah:aeqjce:v137_y2017_i4_q4_p331-370

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.duncker-humblot.de/zeitschriften/jce

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Contextual Economics (JCE) – Schmollers Jahrbuch is currently edited by Peter J. Boettke, Nils Goldschmidt, Stefan Kolev, Stephen T. Ziliak and Joachim Zweynert

More articles in Journal of Contextual Economics (JCE) – Schmollers Jahrbuch from Duncker & Humblot, Berlin
Bibliographic data for series maintained by E-Publishing-Team ().