Wolff Packing Company v. Court of Industrial Relations

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WOLFF PACKING COMPANY V. COURT OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

WOLFF PACKING COMPANY V. COURT OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, 262 U.S. 522 (1923). Following a series of labor actions in 1920, the Kansas legislature passed an act declaring a compelling public interest in the manufacture of food and clothing, mining, public utilities, and transportation. A three-judge industrial court was given sweeping authority to fix wages and labor conditions. In 1923 a unanimous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court ended the industrial court by declaring the fixing of wages in a packing plant a deprivation of property and a denial of the freedom of contract guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mason, Alpheus T. William Howard Taft: Chief Justice. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964.

Tribe, Laurence H. American Constitutional Law, 3d ed. New York: Foundation Press, 2000.

Allen E.Ragan/a. r.

See alsoConstitution of the United States ; Contract Clause ; Labor ; Labor Legislation and Administration ; Wages and Hours of Labor, Regulation of .

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