Labor law expert Kate Andrias, a professor at Columbia Law School, writes that the “Constitution’s meaning is not the Supreme Court’s alone to define” in an essay published Oct. 10 in The New York Times.
Andrias is the Patricia D. and R. Paul Yetter Professor of Law, is a co-director of the Columbia Labor Lab and the Columbia Law School Center for Constitutional Governance, and she is also a member of the Center for Political Economy's advisory board.
In the essay, “The Constitution Doesn’t Belong to Trump or the Supreme Court,” Andrias writes that the Supreme Court doesn’t always get to have the last word.
“When courts close doors, people can open new ones,” she wrote. “In the 1910s and ’20s, the Supreme Court repeatedly struck down federal laws protecting children from exploitation. Undeterred, labor advocates demanded that their elected representatives try again. Reformers even pushed a constitutional amendment. Though it failed, the campaign created the momentum for the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which prohibited child labor and guaranteed minimum wages and overtime protections.”
