The Kansas Court of Industrial Relations: Interwar America's Dangerous Experiment in Social Control (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781009665278)

The Kansas Court of Industrial Relations, founded in 1920, was the lone US trial of a labor court - a policy design used almost everywhere else in the industrialized world during the interwar period. What led Kansas to establish the KCIR when no other state did? And what were the consequences of its existence for the development of economic policy in the rest of the country? Ben Merriman explores how the KCIR's bans on strikes and lockouts, heavy criminal sanctions, and unilateral control over the material terms of economic life, resulted in America's closest practical encounter with fascism. Battered by the Supreme Court in 1923, the KCIR's failure destroyed American interest in labor courts. But the legal battles and policy divisions about the KCIR, which enjoyed powerful supporters, were an early sign of the new political and intellectual alignments that led to America's unique New Deal labor policy.

Author: Ben Merriman
ISBN-10: 1009665278
ISBN-13: 9781009665278
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 08/14/2025
Pages: 264
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.75d