On Friday and Saturday of this week (October 15-16), Boston University School of Law is holding a conference to commemorate the centennial of the landmark Supreme Court case of Lochner v. New York. In Lochner, the Supreme Court held that a state maximum hours laws for bakery workers violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because it interfered with the liberty of contract. (The case was decided in 1905, and the law review issue in which the paper are to be published will appear in 2005.) The case later came to be reviled by the Supreme Court and constitutional law professors, though in recent years it has received somewhat more sympathetic treatment by some legal academics.
Very interesting papers will be given by Lynn A. Baker (Texas), Jack M. Balkin (Yale), Barry Cushman (Virginia), Pamela S. Karlan (Stanford), and Keith E. Whittington (Princeton). Commentators include: David E. Bernstein (GMU & the Volokh Conspiracy), William E. Forbath (Texas), Richard Thompson Ford (Stanford), Howard Gillman USC) and Joseph W. Singer (Harvard).
The conference begins with a panel I will moderate on Jack Balkin’s paper on Friday at 3:00pm, followed by the other four papers on Saturday. Faculty, law students and other readers of the Volokh Conspiracy are welcome to attend free of charge. Even if you cannot come both days, stop by for whatever you can catch. And identify yourself as a Volokh Conspiracy reader.
Additional details, including the location, schedule and bios of speakers can be found here.
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