“Some Choice of Means”

Progressive-era constitutionalists who believed that problems of industrialization required increasing governmental intervention in economic life debated the meaning of McCulloch v. Maryland against conservatives who claimed that such interventions violated a supposedly constitutional principle of laissez faire. Progressives’ pro-imperialism views morphed into advocacy of domestic social reform as thinkers like James Bradley Thayer, Theodore Roosevelt, and Albert Beveridge interpreted McCulloch to maintain that the Constitution was sufficiently expansive and adaptable to accommodate both imperialism and reform. Meanwhile, the conservative judicial activism of this period, known as the Lochner era from the Supreme Court decision in Lochner v. New York (1905), led the Supreme Court to invalidate key federal laws, like the 1916 Child Labor Act, which was struck down in Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918). Notwithstanding McCulloch, the Court denied Congress the power to regulate labor and productive activities, even when necessary and proper to regulating interstate commerce.