Lochner v. New York: 1905

Holding

A state may not regulate the working hours mutually agreed upon by employers and employees as this violates their Fourteenth Amendment right to contract freely under the Due Process Clause.

"This case is decided upon an economic theory which a large part of the country does not entertain....General propositions do not decide concrete cases. The decision will depend on a judgment or intuition more subtle than any articulate major premise."

Holme's Quote: The Court is making a policy choice for the people which is not the court's job. What decides the case is a policy judgment on the part of the judges. Thinks that the judges are choosing as a conceptual starting point their own economic theories of laissez fair economics. But, he thinks these choices of conceptual starting points are really policy judgments, and being so, they belong in the hands of the legislatures and the citizens.

Harlan Dissent:

In favor of Deference to the State Legislatures: If there are good arguments on both sides for there being real and substantial relationship to the health of workers or not, then the court should defer to the legislatures

Reasoning

State police power is not absolute and must be balanced against individual liberty concerns protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. In the present case, the baking profession does not present any of the concerns justifying the states' regulation of hours in some other professions. The regulation in question was not a health law, but was an arbitrary interference into the individual right of employers and employees to contract.

Holme's Dissent

legislature/majority should have its way in deciding how to regulate bargaining power, judges are not better than the majority and legislatures at making these kinds of policy decisions