ABSTRACT
In most other Western democracies, the legal system has been somewhat sympathetic, or at least relatively impartial, in its relations with organized labor, often resisting employer demands, protecting labor at critical moments, and sometimes even embracing it. In early US history, the legal system treated unions as criminal conspiracies; later it recognized them as legitimate but treated strikes as criminal conspiracies; still later, it accepted some strikes as legal in principle but often treated the activities connected with them (picketing, boycotts, meetings, publications) as criminal conspiracies. The trust-busting against unions peaked in the 1920s. In that decade, unions and unionists were charged in some seventy-two cases with violations of antitrust law, far more than in the three preceding decades. The US Supreme Court also consistently upheld injunctions issued by lower courts. By contrast, US courts have issued thousands of injunctions and restraining orders against unions and are still issuing them despite protests against the practice.
