Choice of Law, the Constitution, and Lochner

The rise and fall of constitutional limits on state choice of law coincides almost perfectly with the so-called Lochner era in Supreme Court history and the connection is by no means accidental. This Note reveals that nearly half of all of the decisions in which the Court used “liberty of contract” reasoning to invalidate state or federal action—including the very first case to do so—dealt not with fundamental economic rights but with choice of law issues. After explaining how the Court’s choice of law doctrines worked, this Note concludes that for the most part they are not susceptible to the traditional criticisms of Lochner. This Note also concludes, however, that although Lochner may not teach us about the choice of law cases, the choice of law cases may help us better understand Lochner. Notions of consent-based political obligation evident in the choice of law cases can reconcile competing interpretations of the Lochner Court’s more controversial substantive due process decisions, while the embrace of legal realism that led the Court in the 1930s to discard its choice of law doctrines suggests that nonpolitical explanations for the abandonment of “Lochnerism” have been underappreciated in accounts of the New Deal Era Constitutional revolution. Choice of law theorists and legal historians alike would do well to revisit the complexities of the Supreme Court’s now-forgotten attempt to address the constitutional limits on the reach of state laws.