Hammer v. Dagenhart

Justice Holmes was known as "the great dissenter" because he so often disagreed with the majority opinion of the Court. A liberal at a time when the Court was quite conservative, he often wrote the minority opinion, as he did in this case. "It does not matter whether the supposed evil precedes or follows the transportation," Holmes wrote. "It is enough that in the opinion of Congress that transportation encourages the evil."

Despite Holmes's eloquent objections, the vote was 5-4 in favor of Dagenhart, and America's first child-labor legislation was overturned. The public was outraged. The New York Evening Mail, for example, called it a "victory of sordidness over our little ones." Senator Owen announced plans to introduce an amended version of his bill that would include language forbidding any court to declare it unconstitutional.

More realistically, members of Congress opposed to child labor turned away from the federal government's power to regulate commerce and toward its power to tax. On 24 February 1919, Congress passed a revenue act that levied a stiff tax against products made by child labor. But that law was struck down by the courts in the Child Labor Tax Case of 1922.