The problem for our determination is whether the statute, as construed and applied, unreasonably infringes the liberty guaranteed to the plaintiff in error by the Fourteenth Amendment. "No State shall . . . deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."
While this Court has not attempted to define with exactness the liberty thus guaranteed, the term has received much consideration and some of the included things have been definitely stated. Without doubt, it denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint, but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.
Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36;
Butchers' Union Co. v. Crescent City Co., 111 U.S. 746;
Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356;
Minnesota v. Barber, 136 U.S. 313;
Allgeyer v. Louisiana, 165 U.S. 578;
Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45;
Twining v. New Jersey, 211 U.S. 78;
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R.R. Co. v. McGuire, 219 U.S. 549;
Truax v. Raich, 239 U.S. 33;
Adams v. Tanner, 244 U.S. 590;
New York Life Ins. Co. v. Dodge, 246 U.S. 357;
Truax v. Corrigan, 257 U.S. 312;
Adkins v. Children's Hospital, 261 U.S. 525;
Wyeth v. Cambridge Board of Health, 200 Mass. 474. The established doctrine is that this
liberty may not be interfered with, under the guise of protecting the public interest, by legislative action which is arbitrary or without reasonable relation to some purpose within the competency of the State to effect. Determination by the legislature of what constitutes proper exercise of police power is not final or conclusive, but is subject to supervision by the courts.
Lawton v. Steele, 152 U.S. 133, 137.