University of Chicago Press
Cloth $45 2011, 216 pages
Available at a
substantial discount from
Amazon.com or from the
Cato Institute. An ebook version may be rented for thirty days
from the University of Chicago Press for $7.00.
David Bernstein
is Foundation Professor at the George Mason University School of Law and
author of
Only One Place of Redress: African Americans, Labor Regulations,
and the Courts from Reconstruction to the New Deal (Duke University Press
2001).
"An exhilarating book full of interesting new
perspectives. Rehabilitating Lochner will change
the way people think about the transition from the late
nineteenth century to the modern New Deal and Civil
Rights regime. It does what good revisionist history
should do: see what is familiar in new ways."—Jack M. Balkin, Yale Law School
"David Bernstein drives home powerfully and convincingly
the fact that the supporters of Lochner were the biggest
proponents of protecting the personal rights of African
Americans, Roman Catholics, and other minorities.
Rehabilitating Lochner will have a profound impact
on constitutional law scholarship."—William E. Nelson,
New York University
"A terrific work of historical revisionism,
Rehabilitating Lochner brings out some attractive
resonances in libertarian themes associated with the
widely disparaged constitutional jurisprudence of the
period from 1905 to 1937, and some discordant undertones
to the Progressive themes sounded during that period.
It should induce some changes in the way many students
and scholars read the cases from that period."—Mark Tushnet, Harvard Law School
"The best general survey of the literature of Lochner
revisionism."—G.
Edward White, University of Virginia School of Law
"Rehabilitating Lochner is about a U.S. Supreme
Court decision that generations of lawyers and law
students have been taught to scorn as the imposition of
obsolete economic dogma disguised as constitutional
principle. Comes now David E. Bernstein to set the
record straight. . . . Not all will find unchallengeable
every point the author makes. Yet all will broaden their
understanding of our national charter and what the
Supreme Court has done with it over the past century or
so."—New York Law Journal
"David E. Bernstein takes issue with conventional wisdom
and argues that if one understands the larger context
and broader stream of historical development, Lochner
was a ‘good law’ at the time and, despite the fact
that it was overruled, its core principles remain good
constitutional law today. This is a delightful and
informative book that deserves a broad audience."
Malcolm M. Feeley, Choice
Click
here to read a review by law professor Glenn Reynolds ("The false
narrative of Lochner has controlled the past for decades, but
Bernstein’s clear and incisive work may wrest that control away and move us
back to the truth.")
Click
here to read a review by law professor Scott Gerber ("Rehabilitating
Lochner is intellectual history in its highest form.... Bernstein has done
nothing less than explode the myth of Lochner.... This is a book that will
transform the way constitutional law is understood for years to come.")
Click
here to read a review by Claremont Institute fellow Joseph Tartakovsky
(Bernstein "attempts the grand task of correcting decades of erroneous
accounts and succeeds with aplomb")
Click here to read a review by the Pacific Legal Foundation's Tim
Sandefur ("Bernstein's book is an important contribution to
understanding not only the Lochner decision itself, but the political
and jurisprudential storms that have surrounded it for a century. I
recommend it highly.")
Click here to read a review by Damon Root of Reason magazine
("Drawing on both previous legal scholarship and his own extensive
historical research, Bernstein offers a definitive account of this
misunderstood and unjustly maligned case.")
Click here to read a review by NYU Law School Professor Richard
Epstein ("Bernstein takes on the task of demonstrating that the
conventional denunciation of Lochner is both inaccurate and
unfair. By dint of his hard work and meticulous research, we can say,
Mission Accomplished!)
Click
here to read a review by attorney Tom Bowden (“A serious and
significant work of historical revisionism. ... Rehabilitating
Lochner belongs on the short list of works that effectively debunk myths
clinging to important Supreme Court cases.”)
Click here to read a review by attorney Jacob Huebert ("Rehabilitating
Lochner does what it sets out to do very well. It places Lochner
in its historical context, telling us where it came from, what it
actually did, who attacked it, and what those people believed. . . . I
highly recommend it to anyone interested in the topic.")
Click here to read a review by political scientist George Thomas
(“Bernstein is wonderfully successful in situating the logic of the
Lochner opinion and the particulars of the case in historical
perspective.”)
Click here to read a review by historian Ted McAllister ("amazingly
rich given the brevity of the book... [Bernstein’s] analysis is not only
impressive but suggestive of much deeper issues about historical
understanding.")
Click here to read a review by Princeton constitutional scholar
Keith Whittington (“a fine contribution to the ongoing revisionist
literature on the Lochner era of constitutional jurisprudence”)
Click here to read a review in the Harvard Law Review
("Bernstein provides a convincing historical account of Lochner
that challenges many of the negative narratives that have caused
Lochner to become a quintessential anticanonical case.")
