Matt Bewig
I first became interested in history as a profession as an undergraduate at the University of Missouri at St. Louis. My Senior Thesis advisor was George Rawick, who was the editor of the Slave Narratives series published by Greenwood Press in the early 70s and the author of "From Sundown to Sunup: The World the Slaves Made." He was absolutely committed to history from the bottom up, and so am I.
In general, I am interested in the dynamic interplay between legal structures and social relationships as they develop over time. My dissertation examines the transnational background of the late nineteenth century bakery reform movement and its significance in the development of American constitutional law. Around the turn of the twentieth century, movements demanding changes in bakery sanitation, working conditions, and hours of labor arose in Europe, North America, and Australia. In the U.S., organized bakers tried to achieve reform through strikes and boycotts, but employer intransigence and judicial hostility defeated them. The bakers then turned to legislation by arguing that their wretched working conditions and long hours of labor endangered public health. Several states enacted sanitary reform and hours limitation laws, but the Supreme Court, in the landmark case of Lochner v. New York, held the hours statutes unconstitutional. Over the next three decades, Lochner served as legal authority for the judicial invalidation of literally hundreds of state and local laws that attempted to ameliorate the harsh effects of the capitalist market, especially those that were the result of organized working class political action or that were pro-labor in some way. Today, there are influential legal scholars and activists who advocate a return to the Lochner era of judicial hostility to regulation, and the issue of how a democratic republic ought to structure market relationships remains vital.
Supervisors: Elizabeth Dale and Robert Zieger
In general, I am interested in the dynamic interplay between legal structures and social relationships as they develop over time. My dissertation examines the transnational background of the late nineteenth century bakery reform movement and its significance in the development of American constitutional law. Around the turn of the twentieth century, movements demanding changes in bakery sanitation, working conditions, and hours of labor arose in Europe, North America, and Australia. In the U.S., organized bakers tried to achieve reform through strikes and boycotts, but employer intransigence and judicial hostility defeated them. The bakers then turned to legislation by arguing that their wretched working conditions and long hours of labor endangered public health. Several states enacted sanitary reform and hours limitation laws, but the Supreme Court, in the landmark case of Lochner v. New York, held the hours statutes unconstitutional. Over the next three decades, Lochner served as legal authority for the judicial invalidation of literally hundreds of state and local laws that attempted to ameliorate the harsh effects of the capitalist market, especially those that were the result of organized working class political action or that were pro-labor in some way. Today, there are influential legal scholars and activists who advocate a return to the Lochner era of judicial hostility to regulation, and the issue of how a democratic republic ought to structure market relationships remains vital.
Supervisors: Elizabeth Dale and Robert Zieger
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Academic Papers by Matt Bewig
Dramatis Personae: Hippocrates, Rufus Peckham, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Marshall Harlan, George Block, Henry Weismann, Sylvius, Richard Morton, Bernardino Ramazzini, Robert Koch.
Major Themes & Events: tuberculosis, TB, phthisis, bakeries, occupational health, Matthew Baillie, Laennec, etiology, diathesis.
This article examines the intellectual self-activity of the journeymen bakers in their agitation for shorter hours and will argue that the bakers generated and sustained a perspective on the issues surrounding the case of Lochner v. New York that was decidedly different from that which informed the thinking of the Court and subsequent commentators.
Dramatis Personae: Chief Justice Rufus Peckham, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Marshall Harlan, Henry Weissman, George Block, Cyrus Edson, Ernst Freund, Roscoe Pound, Edward Corwin.
Major Themes & Events: Lochner v. New York, Hours of labor, working class, bakeries, Supreme Court, overwork, Constitution, economics, political economy, rights, substantive due process.
News Articles from AllGov.com by Matt Bewig
Dramatis Personae: Hippocrates, Rufus Peckham, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Marshall Harlan, George Block, Henry Weismann, Sylvius, Richard Morton, Bernardino Ramazzini, Robert Koch.
Major Themes & Events: tuberculosis, TB, phthisis, bakeries, occupational health, Matthew Baillie, Laennec, etiology, diathesis.
This article examines the intellectual self-activity of the journeymen bakers in their agitation for shorter hours and will argue that the bakers generated and sustained a perspective on the issues surrounding the case of Lochner v. New York that was decidedly different from that which informed the thinking of the Court and subsequent commentators.
Dramatis Personae: Chief Justice Rufus Peckham, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Marshall Harlan, Henry Weissman, George Block, Cyrus Edson, Ernst Freund, Roscoe Pound, Edward Corwin.
Major Themes & Events: Lochner v. New York, Hours of labor, working class, bakeries, Supreme Court, overwork, Constitution, economics, political economy, rights, substantive due process.