The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 (Oxford History of the United States)

by Richard White

What rendered this process far less smooth and made it seem contradictory and inconsistent was the simultaneous expansion of the third branch of government, the courts. The extension of judicial authority launched a battle between the branches of the government, which involved power, ideology, and the very nature of governance. The clash between the legislative and judicial branches created an ideological whitewater as antimonopoly, labor, and evangelical reforms passed by Congress and the legislatures encountered judicial resistance. The contest was less over big government versus small government than which branch of government, the legislative or the judicial, would dominate and which definition of free labor would prevail.