''In re Debs'', 158 U.S. 564 (1895), was a labor law case of the

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on question ...

, which upheld a contempt of court conviction against Eugene V. Debs. Debs had the American Railway Union continue its 1894 Pullman Strike in violation of a federal injunction ordering

labor unions A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages ...

back to work. The Supreme Court held that the federal government's

Commerce Clause The Commerce Clause describes an enumerated power listed in the United States Constitution ( Article I, Section 8, Clause 3). The clause states that the United States Congress shall have power "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and amon ...

authority includes the ability to regulate the labor conditions of railways.

Background

Eugene V. Debs, president of the American Railway Union, had been involved in the Pullman Strike earlier in 1894 and challenged the federal

injunction An injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a special court order compelling a party to do or refrain from doing certain acts. It was developed by the English courts of equity but its origins go back to Roman law and the equitable rem ...

ordering the strikers back to work where they would face being fired. The injunction had been issued because of the violent nature of the strike. However, Debs refused to end the strike and was subsequently cited for

contempt of court Contempt of court, often referred to simply as "contempt", is the crime of being disobedient to or disrespectful toward a court of law and its officers in the form of behavior that opposes or defies the authority, justice, and dignity of the co ...

; he appealed the decision to the courts. The main question being debated was whether the

federal government A federation (also called a federal state) is an entity characterized by a political union, union of partially federated state, self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a #Federal governments, federal government (federalism) ...

had a right to issue the injunction, which dealt with both interstate and intrastate commerce and shipping on rail cars.

Judgment

Justice In its broadest sense, justice is the idea that individuals should be treated fairly. According to the ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', the most plausible candidate for a core definition comes from the ''Institutes (Justinian), Inst ...

David Josiah Brewer held, for a unanimous court, in favor of the U.S. government. Joined by Chief Justice Melville Fuller and Associate Justices Stephen Johnson Field, John Marshall Harlan, Horace Gray, Henry Billings Brown, George Shiras Jr., Howell Edmunds Jackson, and Edward Douglass White, the court ruled that the government had a right to regulate interstate commerce and ensure the operations of the Postal Service, along with a responsibility to "ensure the general welfare of the public." The decision slowed the momentum of labor unions. Debs would go on to lose another Supreme Court case in '' Debs v. United States''.

Significance

In '' Loewe v. Lawlor'' the Supreme Court stated that unions were in fact potentially liable for antitrust violations. In response, Congress passed the

Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 (, codified at , ), is a part of United States antitrust law with the goal of adding further substance to the U.S. antitrust law regime; the Clayton Act seeks to prevent anticompetitive practices in their incip ...

to take unions out of antitrust law. In addition, the ability to issue labor injunctions was greatly reduced with the passage of the Norris–La Guardia Act of 1932, which was upheld by the Supreme Court in ''Lauf v. E. G. Shinner & Co''., 303 U.S. 323 (1938).

Notes

References

* Papke, David Ray. (1999) The Pullman Case: The Clash of Labor and Capital in Industrial America. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas

External links