The KCIR before the US Supreme Court

Abstract

Contrary to oft-repeated views, litigation over the KCIR did not result in a ban on compulsory arbitration: in the 1920s, it was understood that the KCIR cases showed compulsion was permissible in most of the era’s major industries. However, US Supreme Court rulings on the KCIR were important: the extremity of the KCIR’s design, and the self-discipline of its labor opponents, created cases that posed important legal questions in uniquely clear, simple form. Drawing from archival material as well as opinions, this chapter shows that KCIR-related litigation was seized upon as a chance to clarify the scope and character of state economic regulation authorized by the public interest, and whether the Fourteenth Amendment categorically protected peaceful, orderly strikes. Justice Taft’s 1923 ‘Wolff Packing Company’ opinion, typologizing regulation in the public interest, was a clarifying landmark underpinning the Court’s sharp anti-regulatory turn. Justice Brandeis’ 1926 Dorchy decision, flatly denying an absolute right to strike under the Fourteenth Amendment, was a stinging and enduring reversal for labor.

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