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
why this moral obligation should not be embodied in a statute and
extended to everybody. The scale of damages should of course be put so
low as not to encourage persons to expose themselves, still less their
own children, to injury in the hope of getting monetary compensation.
But although in India we are told the natives throw themselves under
the wheels of automobiles, it is not probable that in American
civilization there would be serious abuse of the law in this
particular. Five thousand dollars, for instance, for loss of life or
limb or eye, with a scale going down, as does the German law, to a
mere compensation for time lost and medical attendance in ordinary
injuries, would be sufficient in equity and would surely not encourage
persons voluntarily to maim themselves.
The next great line of legislation concerns the mode of payment of
wages. The _amount_, as has been said, is never regulated; but it has
been customary for nearly a century for the law to require payment
in cash, or at least that it be not compulsorily made in goods or
supplies, or still worse in store orders. This line of legislation is
commonly known as the anti-truck laws and exists in most States, but
has been strenuously opposed in the South and Southwest as interfering
with the liberty of contract, so that in those more conservative
States the courts have very often nullified such legislation. It may
be summarized as follows:
(1) Weekly or time payment laws. These exist in more than half the
States, and are always constitutional as to corporations, but are
possibly unconstitutional in all States except Massachusetts when
applied to private employers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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