7 - Dressing Economically
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2013
Summary
The production, maintenance, trade, and transportation of clothes have been central to the development of constitutional doctrine, deeply implicating issues of hierarchy, democracy, and to a lesser extent, sexuality. The entwinement of slavery and cotton, the laissez-faire Lochner-era struggles in sweatshops and textiles mills, and the contemporary reign of international free trade have challenged and changed the constitutional contours of labor responsible for our attire. Just as Tudor sumptuary laws sought to channel sartorial options to maximize economic profits, so too has U.S. constitutional doctrine reckoned with cotton, cloth, and clothes as imperative to capitalist success.
One need not subscribe to the theories of Law and Economics, or Marxism, or Charles Beard’s controversial 1913 book An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States to accept the premise that the Constitution concerns itself with economic relations. Additionally, one need not reject Justice Holmes’s dissent in Lochner v. New York, averring that the “constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory, whether of paternalism and the organic relation of the citizen to the State or of laissez faire.” Instead, it is sufficient to recall the oft-cited failings of the Articles of Confederation that led to the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention: the lack of power to regulate commerce and to tax, including the power to lay and collect duties, imposts, and excises. These broad powers were allocated to Congress in the Constitution of 1787, and states were specifically prohibited from imposing duties on imports and exports. The power of Congress to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes” has proven to be Congress’s most expansive power, and the basis of many of its worker protection and anti-discrimination laws. Yet the commerce clause has also been narrowly interpreted to limit congressional power to regulate the conditions of labor. Moreover, the Constitution safeguarded slavery.
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- Dressing ConstitutionallyHierarchy, Sexuality, and Democracy from our Hairstyles to our Shoes, pp. 153 - 180Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013