ABSTRACT
Judicial bias by Supreme Court majorities against labor unions was an element of the American economy in the twentieth century until the great over-rulings of 1937 onward. Unions were held to have violated the Sherman Anti-trust Act and the employers' liberty of contract under the due process clauses. Section 6 of the Clayton Act was an addition to the antitrust laws: The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce. State statutes limiting injunctions against striking employees, similar to Section 20 of the Clayton Act, were also attacked in the courts. Employment contracts in which employers' bargaining power enabled them to compel employees to promise not to join or to remain in labor unions were labeled "yellow dog" contracts. Although not specifically concerned with yellow dog contracts, the issue of freedom of association of railroad workers in their independent unions reached the Supreme Court again in 1930.
