Sexual Distinctions in the Law: Early Maximum Hour Decisions.

Dalrymple, Candice. Sexual Distinctions in the Law: Early Maximum Hour Decisions of the United States Supreme Court, 1905-1917. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1987. 325 pp. Publisher's red cloth, near fine. Internally clean. $20. * A rigorous constitutional and gender-focused legal study analyzing the Supreme Court decisions that shaped protective labor legislation for women during the Progressive Era. Focusing on the pivotal years between the infamous anti-regulatory ruling in Lochner v. New York (1905) and the validation of expanded state regulation in Bunting v. Oregon (1917), Dalrymple dissects how jurists utilized contemporary sociological, medical, and biological arguments to justify state intervention in women's labor contracts. The text offers a vital historical framework for understanding the development of gender-based classifications in American constitutional law and the evolution of the right to contract.