DUPLEX PRINTING PRESS COMPANY v. DEERING 254 U.S. 443 (1921)

In a case that brought the apparently prolabor provisions of the clayton act before the Supreme Court, a 6–3 majority held that the act had placed no substantial bar to issuing injunctions against labor unions. Section 6 of the act allowed unions to "lawfully [carry] out … legitimate objects," and section 20 denied the issuance of injunctions in a labor dispute unless essential to protect property. Duplex sought an injunction against a secondary boycott which had been brought to force unionization of their open shop, claiming injury to and destruction of interstate commerce. The Court declared that the boycott, even though peaceful, was not a "lawful method" of achieving the union's ends and thus violated the antitrust laws. According to the Court, section 6 only approved methods not expressly forbidden. Moreover, the majority redefined section 20: "labor dispute" was not meant generically but applied only "to parties standing in proximate relation to a controversy," an unwarranted gloss. They thus confined the section to a mere reflection of precedent, undoing congressional action.

Justice louis d. brandeis, joined by Justices oliver wendell holmes and john h. clarke, dissented. Brandeis argued that the defendants shared a "common interest" with the employees, and the majority's denial of the existence of a dispute, within the act's meaning, simply ignored reality. Section 20, said the dissenters, attempted to render both sides equal. Although the Court refused to acknowledge that the Clayton Act had legalized any new methods for labor's use, a similar decision in bedford cut stone v. journeymen stonecutters (1927) prompted enactment of the norris-laguardia act in 1932, reversing the doctrinal direction.

David Gordon
(1986)

(see also: Labor and the Antitrust Laws.)