Labor, the Courts, and Section 7(A)

Any economic system, whether systematic or not, involves a particular set of relationships between men and things and between men and men, and so needs the support of a corresponding legal and political system. One naturally expects political and legal change to follow social and economic revolutions. Perhaps that is the New Deal—a political and legal revolution to meet the demands of a new economic era. But whatever the situation may require to the mind of the Executive and Congress, there remains the question whether any particular legislative project is allowable under the Constitution. For our government, this matter of bringing law into conformity with economics meets with peculiar difficulties. It is not enough to secure rights by legislative enactment. Such guarantees must run the gauntlet first of administrative interpretation and ultimately of the courts. If one may judge from newspaper headlines, there is no surer way to bring our rights into controversy than to embody them in a statute.