An Important Note

At the Grey Lady, they note the obvious, that the supreme court is looking at returning to the infamous  Lochner decision:

In the annals of the Supreme Court, few opinions have been more reviled than the 1905 decision in Lochner v. New York.

In striking down a law that prevented bakery employees from working more than 10 hours a day and 60 hours a week, the court, under the 14th Amendment, enshrined a constitutional right to “freedom of contract” — that is, the freedom of people to form contracts without the government’s involvement. The decision set the stage for what became known as the “Lochner era” of laissez-faire capitalism.

That era lasted until the Great Depression and the New Deal in the 1930s. In its heyday, the frequently-cited Lochner was arguably the most important business case the court had ever decided, severely curtailing the government’s ability to regulate business and the economy.

Today, Lochner is imprinted on the mind of nearly every law student as an example of a bad decision. While Lochner was never expressly overruled, it, along with the segregation-era decisions of Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson, was practically cast aside by subsequent rulings.

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Such a notion may seem far-fetched. After all, Lochner is cited eight times in the various Dobbs opinions — each time as an example of the kind of decision that should be reversed or ignored because it substituted the court’s judgment for that of a duly elected legislature.

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With six conservative justices, the court seems receptive to a renewed deference to the moribund notion of freedom of contract, a goal that some libertarian and conservative lawyers and scholars have long cherished.

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The case for Lochner is plainly embedded in the Dobbs decision. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said that rights not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution had to be “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” and “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.” Unlike a right to abortion, freedom of contract is widely believed to meet that definition.

The current "Conservative Majority" on the Supreme Court is dedicated to repealing the the administrative state. 

The corrupt machinations of the Alito, Barret, Gorsuch, Roberts, Thomas, and  Kavanaugh are determined to overrule the last 100 years of jurisprudence, and return us to an era where "Separate but equal," is the law of the land.