Louis Brandeis

“ Without doubt, it denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.' Meyer v. ”

“ The principles governing competition between rival individuals seeking contracts or opportunity to work as journeymen cannot reasonably be applied in this case. Neither the union nor its members take tile laying contracts. Their interests are confined to employment of helpers and layers, their wages, hours of service, etc. The contest is not between unionized and other contractors or between one employer and another. The immediate issue is between the unions and plaintiff in respect of his right to work in the performance of his own jobs. ”

“ It cannot be said that, if he should be prevented from laboring as helper or layer, the work for union men to do would be increased. The unions exclude their members from jobs taken by nonunion employers. About half the tile contractors are not unionized. More than 60 per cent. of the tile layers are nonunion men. The value of plaintiff's labor as helper and tile layer is very small-about $750 per year. Between union members and plaintiff there is no immediate or direct competition. ”

“ Plaintiff lives and works in Milwaukee. Since the latter part of 1931, he has been engaged in performing small tile laying jobs. He has personally performed almost half the manual labor required. He usually employs a tile setter and helper; occasionally he has more than one of each. He has never been a member of the tile layers union. Though a competent mechanic in that trade, he is excluded from membership because he takes contracts and because he has not served the apprenticeship required by union rules. In 1935 he had about forty jobs. ”

“ Chief among such contracts is that of personal employment, by which labor and other services are exchanged for money or other forms of property. If this right be struck down or arbitrarily interfered with, there is a substantial impairment of liberty in the long-established constitutional sense. The right is as essential to the laborer as to the capitalist, to the poor as to the rich; for the vast majority of persons have no other honest way to begin to acquire property, save by working for money.' Coppage v. ”

“ Arbitrary or capricious exercise of that power whereby a wrongful and highly injurious invasion of rights of liberty and property is sanctioned, stripping one of all remedy, is wholly at variance with those principles. Truax v. Corrigan, 257 U.S. 312, 327, 42 S.Ct. 124, 127, 66 L.Ed. 254, 27 A.L.R. 375.
It may be assumed that the picketing, upheld in virtue of the challenged statute, lawfully might be employed in a controversy between employer and employees for the purpose of persuading the employer to increase pay, etc., and dissuading nonunion workers from displacing union members. ”