Historic Supreme Courts--Abortion, Episode 5: Contracts, Not Bodies: How the Fuller‑Lochner Court Would've Rejected Roe

This episode explains how the Fuller‑Lochner Supreme Court (late 19th–early 20th century) defined constitutional liberty as economic freedom — the freedom to contract — and used substantive due process to shield markets from democratic regulation.

Reimagining Roe v. Wade on that court's docket, the episode argues the justices would have briskly rejected it as a doctrinal misapplication, returning abortion regulation to the states and viewing Dobbs as a jurisdictional correction that restored their hierarchy: liberty for contracts, not bodies.