How the "Progressives" Bullied the Supreme Court to Redefine the Meaning of Words in the Constitution

In order to accomplish their agenda, the early 20^th-century "progressives" undertook to initiate an entirely new paradigm of constitutional interpretation, one that the Supreme Court initially resisted but later reluctantly acknowledged due to unethical political pressure placed upon it by the "progressives."

The Federal Child Labor Act of 1916 sought to use the Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce in order to prohibit the shipment in interstate commerce of goods made with child labor. The Supreme Court in Hammer v. Dagenhart denied that Congress had the authority to do so, because the making of goods is not in itself commerce, nor does the fact that the goods are later used in commerce justify their production being classified as commerce. The court warned that if the production of goods were recognized as a legitimate object of regulation under the commerce clause, then all manufactures intended for interstate shipment would be brought under federal control to the exclusion of states' authority and thus to the destruction of the principle of federalism.

However, due to pressure from FDR's attempts to pack the court if the justices kept striking down New Deal legislation, the Supreme Court eventually shifted its stance on the interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause. In NLRB v. Jones (1937), the Supreme Court upheld the National Labor Relations Act-which protected the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively and forbade certain "unfair labor practices." The Supreme Court upheld the act on the grounds that a large company's manufacturing plants are "in the stream of commerce," and commerce would be adversely affected by any disruption in production caused by labor disputes and strikes.

In Wickard v. Filburn (1941), the Supreme Court went even further in asserting that a farmer feeding his own grain to his own cattle was engaged in interstate commerce and could thus be fined under the Agricultural Adjustment Act, because grain grown for home production competes with grain sold on the market and therefore affects commerce.