Only One Place of Redress: African Americans, Labor Regulations, and the Courts from Reconstruction to the New Deal (Constitutional Conflicts) [Hardcover]

David E. Bernstein (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0822325837 | ISBN-13: 978-0822325833 | Publication Date: December 28, 2000 | Edition: First Edition

In Only One Place of Redress David E. Bernstein offers a bold reinterpretation of American legal history: he argues that American labor and occupational laws, enacted by state and federal governments after the Civil War and into the twentieth century, benefited dominant groups in society to the detriment of those who lacked political power. Both intentionally and incidentally, claims Bernstein, these laws restricted in particular the job mobility and economic opportunity of blacks.
A pioneer in applying the insights of public choice theory to legal history, Bernstein contends that the much-maligned jurisprudence of the Lochner era—with its emphasis on freedom of contract and private market ordering—actually discouraged discrimination and assisted groups with little political clout. To support this thesis he examines the motivation behind and practical impact of laws restricting interstate labor recruitment, occupational licensing laws, railroad labor laws, minimum wage statutes, the Davis-Bacon Act, and New Deal collective bargaining. He concludes that the ultimate failure of Lochnerism—and the triumph of the regulatory state—not only strengthened racially exclusive labor unions but contributed to a massive loss of employment opportunities for African Americans, the effects of which continue to this day.
Scholars and students interested in race relations, labor law, and legal
or constitutional history will be fascinated by Bernstein’s daring—and controversial—argument.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Only One Place of Redress presents a bold reinterpretation of the relationship between governmental regulations of the marketplace and economic opportunity for blacks. Bernstein challenges the conventional wisdom and invites readers to reconsider breezy assumptions about how employment regulations operated.”—James W. Ely, Jr., author of The Guardian of Every Other Right: A Constitutional History of Property Rights

“A provocative revisionist overview of legislation regulating labor relations. This will undoubtedly receive a great deal of attention from historians and students of the Constitution, and for good reason.”—Mark Tushnet, author of Making Constitutional Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1961–1991

From the Publisher

“A provocative revisionist overview of legislation regulating labor relations. This will undoubtedly receive a great deal of attention from historians and students of the Constitution, and for good reason.”—Mark Tushnet, author of Making Constitutional Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1961–1991

“Only One Place of Redress presents a bold reinterpretation of the relationship between governmental regulations of the marketplace and economic opportunity for blacks. Bernstein challenges the conventional wisdom and invites readers to reconsider breezy assumptions about how employment regulations operated.”—James W. Ely, Jr., author of The Guardian of Every Other Right: A Constitutional History of Property Rights

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Duke University Press Books; First Edition edition (December 28, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822325837
• ISBN-13: 978-0822325833
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,428,488 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Bernstein (George Mason) is the George Mason University Foundation Professor at the George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia, where he has been teaching since 1995. He was a Visiting Professor at Georgetown University Law Center for Spring 2003 semester, at the University of Michigan School of Law for the 2005-06 academic year, and at Brooklyn Law School in Fall 2006.

Professor Bernstein is a nationally recognized expert on the Daubert case and the admissibility of expert testimony, and he is a past chairperson of the Association of American Law Schools Evidence section. Professor Bernstein is the coauthor of The New Wigmore: Expert Evidence (Aspen Law and Business 2003; 2d edition 2011), and coeditor of Phantom Risk: Scientific Inference and the Law (MIT 1993).

Professor Bernstein is also an expert on the "Lochner era" of American constitutional jurisprudence. He is the author of Only One Place of Redress: African-Americans, Labor Regulations, and the Courts from Reconstruction to the New Deal (Duke 2001), and of Rehabilitating Lochner: Defending Individual Rights against Progressive Reform (University of Chicago Press 2011).

Professor Bernstein is also the the author of You Can't Say That! The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Antidiscrimination Laws (Cato Institute 2003).

In addition to his books, Professor Bernstein is is the author of dozens of frequently cited scholarly articles, book chapters, and think tank studies, including articles and review essays in the Yale Law Journal, Michigan Law Review (2), Northwestern University Law Review, Texas Law Review (2), Georgetown Law Journal (2), Vanderbilt Law Review, California Law Review, Washington University Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, Boston University Law Review, and Iowa Law Review.

At George Mason, David Bernstein teaches Products Liability, Evidence, Constitutional Law I and II, and Expert and Scientific Evidence. He is a contributor to the popular Volokh Conspiracy blog.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Book is Well Written and Clearly Argued..., February 4, 2002

By 

The Independent Review (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Only One Place of Redress: African Americans, Labor Regulations, and the Courts from Reconstruction to the New Deal (Constitutional Conflicts) (Hardcover)

The role of nonmarket discrimination in shaping the historical evolution of racial economic differences has long been a central issue in economic history and labor economics. In Only One Place of Redress, David E. Bernstein takes a fresh look at how labor regulations affected black economic status prior to the modern Civil Rights era. The overarching framework of the book is that of public-choice theory in the context of so-called Lochnerism. This term refers to Lochner v. New York, the famous 1905 U.S. Supreme Court decision that in a relative sense limited the ability of government to regulate contracts. The operative word here is relative because even during the Lochner era (1905-37) courts routinely did permit regulation that, according to Bernstein, significantly inhibited the ability of blacks to earn a living and to accumulate wealth. Because blacks were largely disenfranchised, their ability to use the political process to block government discrimination was circumscribed...

...Overall, Only One Place of Redress is a mixed bag. The book is well written and clearly argued, the footnotes are extensive, and Bernstein has an impressive, if somewhat selective, command of secondary sources. These sources are used primarily to buttress points that he is making, as a lawyer would in a brief; that is, Bernstein does not engage in much source criticism, nor (with some exceptions) does he assess sources that might support alternative points of view...

...Only One Place of Redress contains a wealth of useful information about specific types of nonmarket discrimination against African Americans and a wealth of useful references to court cases and to the secondary literature. Therefore, although Bernstein himself has not measured the impact of the labor regulations under his scrutiny, scholars who want to do so will have to read his book.