Commonwealth v. Hunt, decided by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on March 1, 1842, was the first major American court ruling to hold that labor unions were not automatically criminal conspiracies. Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw’s opinion replaced the old rule with a two-part test: a union could be prosecuted only if its purpose was unlawful or its methods were unlawful. The bare fact that workers had combined was no longer enough to convict them.
The Rule Before 1842
American courts had inherited an English common law theory that treated any agreement among workers to raise wages or restrict entry into a trade as a criminal conspiracy. Peaceful conduct did not matter. Violence and threats did not need to be shown. The combination itself was the crime.
The most influential early American application was the 1806 Philadelphia Cordwainers case, in which shoemakers were convicted for agreeing not to work below a set wage. The judge told the jury that a combination of workmen to raise wages was condemned by the rule of law whether it aimed to benefit the members or to injure non-members. In the decades that followed, prosecutors in several cities brought similar conspiracy charges, and worker organizations operated under constant threat of indictment.
The Boston Bootmakers’ Case
The dispute arose inside the Boston Journeymen Bootmakers’ Society. A member named Jeremiah Horne broke the society’s rules, refused to pay the resulting fines, and was pushed out when the society pressured his employer to dismiss him. Horne took his complaint to the district attorney. Seven members of the society were indicted for criminal conspiracy on the theory that they had unlawfully agreed to force employers to fire any journeyman who refused to join the society or pay its fines. The Boston Municipal Court convicted them, and the case reached the Supreme Judicial Court on appeal.1Justia. Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Decisions – Commonwealth v. John Hunt and Others
What Chief Justice Shaw Held
Shaw reversed the conviction. His opinion asked two questions. Was the union’s purpose unlawful? Were its methods unlawful? Only a yes to one of those could support a conspiracy charge.
On purpose, Shaw found nothing criminal in workers wanting everyone in their trade to belong to their organization. He acknowledged that such a goal “would give them a power which might be exerted for useful and honorable purposes, or for dangerous and pernicious ones,” but said that if the power were misused, the misuse itself had to be charged, not inferred from the group’s existence.1Justia. Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Decisions – Commonwealth v. John Hunt and Others
On methods, Shaw treated the bootmakers’ central tactic, refusing to work for employers who hired non-members, as a lawful exercise of workers’ own rights. Workers were “free to work for whom they please, or not to work, if they so prefer,” and agreeing together to exercise that freedom was not a crime. He wrote: “We cannot perceive, that it is criminal for men to agree together to exercise their own acknowledged rights, in such a manner as best to subserve their own interests.”1Justia. Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Decisions – Commonwealth v. John Hunt and Others
Shaw also addressed the argument that union activity could hurt non-members or employers financially. He conceded that a workers’ agreement might “have a tendency to impoverish another, that is, to diminish his gains and profits,” but said the legality of the combination depended on the means used. “If it is to be carried into effect by fair or honorable and lawful means, it is, to say the least, innocent; if by falsehood or force, it may be stamped with the character of conspiracy.”1Justia. Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Decisions – Commonwealth v. John Hunt and Others
Why the Decision Mattered
The immediate effect was to remove the legal ground prosecutors had used to charge workers for organizing itself. Under Shaw’s framework, the state had to identify an unlawful goal or an unlawful tactic. Pointing to the mere existence of a union was no longer enough.
The decision also gave legal cover to what Shaw called peaceful coercion, including the practice of refusing to work alongside non-members. That practice, later known as the closed shop, had been one of the most common triggers for conspiracy prosecutions. Treating it as a legitimate exercise of workers’ right to choose their employment took one of the main legal weapons out of employers’ hands.
What the Ruling Did Not Do
Commonwealth v. Hunt was binding only in Massachusetts, and it did not end legal hostility toward unions. Employers and prosecutors shifted to other theories.
By the late nineteenth century, employers were seeking court injunctions to halt strikes and boycotts, arguing that union activities were restraints of trade under common law. After Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890, unions were sometimes prosecuted under federal antitrust law, with courts treating coordinated labor action as an illegal restraint on commerce. The conspiracy doctrine Shaw had weakened was largely replaced by new tools that could be just as effective at breaking strikes.
Federal law did not catch up to Shaw’s principle until the twentieth century. The Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932 stripped federal courts of the power to issue injunctions in most labor disputes. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 established a federal right to organize, form unions, and bargain collectively. Those statutes gave national legal force to the idea at the center of Shaw’s 1842 opinion: that workers acting together to improve their conditions are not, by that fact alone, criminals.