The Kansas Court of Industrial Relations

‘Ben Merriman turns the collapsed shards of a brief and long-expired Kansas experiment in judge-led corporatism in the 1920s into a stunning review of the role of the state – both what it can do and what it cannot do – in workers’ lives in the twentieth century. Comparing and contrasting the high-minded but failed efforts of William L. Huggins with those of more successful industrial relations reformers like Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter, this book captures a dramatic political struggle; this is engaged legal history and political thought at its sophisticated best.’ Leon Fink, Senior Research Associate, Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, Georgetown University‘A fascinating case and history, shedding new light on a mostly forgotten policy episode in the Kansas Court of Industrial Relations. Carefully researched and written, social scientists of different stripes – law and society, labor, historical and political sociology – will find much to like and will benefit from this book.’ Marc Dixon, Professor of Sociology, Dartmouth College

Ben Merriman is Associate Professor in the School of Public Affairs and Administration at the University of Kansas. Merriman is the author of Conservative Innovators: How States are Challenging Federal Power, as well as articles on political and administrative matters in the American Journal of Sociology, Perspectives on Public Management and Governance, Politics & Society, and Theory & Society.