The Gompers v. Buck’s Stove Saga: A Constitutional Case Study in Dialogue, Resistance, and the Freedom of Speech

Abstract

Adopting a perspective that understands constitutional development as involving both an ongoing, dialogic, and, at times, contentious relationship between the courts (at various levels), and other formal political institutions (like Congress, the President, and organized interest groups) and processes (such as campaigns, elections, and social movements), as well as the practice of popular constitutionalism, this article provides a panoramic account of the constitutional politics surrounding a highly significant early twentieth century labor case. I argue that the Gompers v. Buck's Stove episode - if not the text of the Supreme Court's opinion in the Buck's Stove case itself - marked a major developmental moment in the history and politics of the freedom of speech. This episode, which involved a protracted confrontation between the leader of the American Federation of Labor, Samuel Gompers, and the Buck's Stove and Range Company of St. Louis over Gompers's decision to promote a boycott of the company in the teeth of a court injunction prohibiting him from doing so, illustrates the ways in which constitutional change is negotiated simultaneously both inside and outside the judiciary, and across an array of conceptual dimensions and legal and political institutions.