NCJ Number
120813
Journal
Buffalo Law Review Volume: 37 Issue: 1 Dated: (Winter 1988/89) Pages: 1-117
Date Published
1989
Length
118 pages
Annotation
This article examines the early history of the regulation of labor union picketing and boycotts, pointing out the relationships drawn by the judiciary between labor violence and economic coercion and observing that the terms conservative and antilabor are not useful in understanding major labor injunction cases.
Abstract
An examination of labor cases from the 1890s to 1920s shows a judicial preoccupation with worker violence that went beyond the realities of actual worker behavior. An exaggerated notion of worker violence thus shaped legal doctrines and judges debated whether violence was an inherent part of organized labor activity. Federal and State antitrust laws were used to regulate labor union picketing. Judge (and later Chief Justice) William Howard Taft's labor union opinions are cited as representative of judicial opinions in the time period studied. Taft and other judges carried out ambivalent goals: they wanted to limit pickets, boycotts, and labor violence while at the same time legalizing and rationalizing the acts of labor unions. The imagery employed by judges in justifying their decisions failed to capture the real conditions of workers' lives. 538 footnotes.