Popular Law-making: A study of the origin, history, and present tendencies of law-making by statuteStimson, Frederic Jesup
History
Popular Law-making: A study of the origin, history, and present tendencies of law-making by statute
Stimson, Frederic Jesup
Legislation -- United States
a long time been laws prohibiting the labor of women in England and
regulating their hours. But then there are laws prohibiting women from
serving in immoral occupations, or occupations which are supposed to
be dangerous to their morals, as, for instance, many States have laws
against the serving of liquor, or even of food, by women or girls in
places or restaurants where liquor is served, or for certain hours, or
in certain places. Very conceivably a law might be passed prohibiting
women and girls from the selling of programmes, or attending upon dime
museums, or even selling newspapers, or being district messengers;
but, as we all know, there are women cabmen in Paris. Would
legislation prohibiting such employment to women be unconstitutional?
There is already a considerable amount of it. The cases are
conflicting, the earlier view, and the view taken in the South and in
at least one Federal court, being that such laws are unconstitutional.
The modern doctrine, backed up by that public opinion which we have
above described as the ethical force, would seem to sustain them. The
truth is probably that the legislature must be the sole judge of the
expediency of such legislation; where the court can see that it does
bear a direct relation to the morals of the young women concerned,
or the morals of the general community, it will be sustained as
constitutional under the police power, although to that extent
interfering with the personal liberty of women and with their means of
getting a livelihood.
[Footnote 1: Georgia and South Carolina have such law requiring
sixty-six and sixty hours a week respectively in cotton and woollen
manufacturing; but their constitutionality has never been tested. For
_public_ work, see below.]
[Footnote 2: Commonwealth _v._ Hamilton Manufacturing Co. 120 Mass.
383.]
[Footnote 3: Muller _v._ Oregon, 208 U.S. 412. So in Pennsylvania:
Commonwealth _v._ Beatty, 23 Penn. C.C. 300.]
[Footnote 4: People _v._ Williams, 81 N.E. 778.]
[Footnote 5: Bucher _v._ People, 93 Pac. 14.]
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