page_title: Commonwealth v. Hunt
section_title: State Supreme Court
hierarchical_section_title: Commonwealth v. Hunt / Judgment / State Supreme Court
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Massachusetts judge Lemuel Shaw, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, painted by Boston painter William Morris Hunt. From the collection of the Essex Superior Court.
context_page_description: Commonwealth v. Hunt, 45 Mass. 111 was a case in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on the subject of labor unions. Prior to Hunt the legality of labor combinations in America was uncertain. In March 1842, Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw ruled that labor combinations were legal provided that they were organized for a legal purpose and used legal means to achieve their goals.
context_section_description: Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw held the union's actions were not unlawful, because the objects of the union and the action taken of threatening to stop work to prevent Horne's continued employment, were not unlawful in the law of Massachusetts. This contrasted with the laws in England in 1721, in R v Journeymen Tailors of Cambridge. The union could exercise "a power which might be exerted for useful and honorable purposes, or for dangerous and pernicious ones." But only if an independently unlawful act could be found, which was clearly laid down in the law, could a combination of people to do the same thing also be unlawful. He pointed out that competition among businesses were often treated the same, and so the economic loss to the employer or Horne could not count as actionable damage. The workers were "free to work for whom the please, or not to work, if they so prefer.... 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." Shaw CJ's judgment went as follows.
  We have no doubt, that by the operation of the constitution of this Commonwealth, the general rules of the common law, making conspiracy an indictable offence, are in force here, and that this is included in the description of laws which had, before the adoption of the constitution, been used and approved in the Province, Colony, or State of Massachusetts Bay, and usually practised in the courts of law.... Still, it is proper in this connexion to remark, that although the common law in regard to conspiracy in this Commonwealth is in force, yet it will not necessarily follow that every indictment at common law for this offence is a precedent for a similar indictment in this State. The general rule of the common law is, that it is a criminal and indictable offence, for two or more to confederate and combine together, by concerted means, to do that which is unlawful or criminal, to the injury of the public, or portions or classes of the community, or even to the rights of an individual. This rule of law may be equally in force as a rule of the common law, in England and in this Commonwealth; and yet it must depend upon the local laws of each country to determine, whether the purpose to be accomplished by the combination, or the concerted means of accomplishing it, be unlawful or criminal in the respective countries. All those laws of the parent country, whether rules of the common law, or early English statutes, which were made for the purpose of regulating the wages of laborers, the settlement of paupers, and making it penal for any one to use a trade or handicraft to which he had not served a full apprenticeship—not being adapted to the circumstances of our colonial condition—were not adopted, used or approved, and therefore do not come within the description of the laws adopted and confirmed by the provision of the constitution already cited. This consideration will do something towards reconciling the English and American cases, and may indicate how far the principles of the English cases will apply in this Commonwealth, and show why a conviction in England, in many cases, would not be a precedent for a like conviction here. The King v. Journeymen Tailors of Cambridge, 8 Mod. 10, for instance, is commonly cited as an authority for an indictment at common law, and a conviction of journeymen mechanics of a conspiracy to raise their wages. It was there held, that the indictment need not conclude contra formam statuti, because the gist of the offence was the conspiracy, which was an offence at common law. At the same time it was conceded, that the unlawful object to be accomplished was the raising of wages above the rate fixed by a general act of parliament. It was therefore a conspiracy to violate a general statute law, made for the regulation of a large branch of trade, affecting the comfort and interest of the public; and thus the object to be accomplished by the conspiracy was unlawful, if not criminal.
  [Shaw CJ set out the background on the conspiracy l
caption: Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw, painted by William Morris Hunt
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