Legal Lives in Muller v. Oregon

This paper offers a vital re-interpretation of the canonical 1908 Supreme Court decision, Muller v. Oregon, arguing that the case is more than the origins of feminist jurisprudence or social justice lawyering, as the opinion is traditionally conceived. Rather, the lawsuit and ultimate Supreme Court decision were the result of a complicated relationship between many actors: white female laundry workers, white male laundry owners, male Chinese laundry owners and workers, as well as national business interests, and local and national reformers.

Accordingly, I argue that this micro-history of the lives of the Portlanders involved in the case, goes well beyond current accounts that focus on the national actors. Conversely, the Supreme Court decision involves a complicated relationship between capital and labor and race and gender. Muller is not just a women’s rights or labor case. It is a case where race, gender, and labor are intimately intertwined at the local level.

Second, this paper claims that Muller is uniquely able to show how scale matters in important ways for our scholarship. Those at the heart of Muller were the advocates and lawyers on the East Coast. The legal process literally and figuratively moved the site of contestation and resolution far from the original disputants. It also erased the dynamic environment of race and labor in Portland, leaving only white female victims visible to the national public. The literal distance reflects the figurative distance between the goals of the local actors and those, including feminists like Florence Kelley, on the national stage.