led into error in passing upon the validity of a statute, not from misunderstanding of the law, but from misunderstanding of the facts. This happened in New York. A statute forbidding night work for women was declared arbitrary and void in 1907.[1] In 1915, with fuller knowledge of the investigations of social workers, a like statute was held to be reasonable and valid.[2] Courts know today that statutes are to be viewed, not in isolation or in vacuo, as pronouncements of abstract principles for the guidance of an ideal community, but in the setting and the framework of present-day conditions, as revealed by the labors of economists and students of the social sciences in our own country and abroad.[3] The same fluid and dynamic conception which underlies the modern notion of liberty, as secured to the individual by the constitutional immunity,
- ↑ People v. Williams, 189 N. Y. 131.
- ↑ People v. Schweinler Press, 214 N. Y. 395.
- ↑ Muller v. Oregon, 208 U. S. 412; Pound, "Courts and Legislation," 9 Modern Legal Philosophy Series, p. 225; Pound, "Scope and Progress of Sociological Jurisprudence," 25 Harvard L. R. 513; cf. Brandeis, J., in Adams v. Tanner, 244 U. S. 590, 600.
