hority to abridge the same could be justified
only by exceptional circumstances. To maintain such abridgments at a
minimum, the Court intermittently employed the rule of judicial notice
in a manner best exemplified by a comparison of the early cases of
Holden _v._ Hardy[82] and Lochner _v._ New York,[83] decisions which
bear the same relation to each other as Powell _v._ Pennsylvania[84] and
Mugler _v._ Kansas.[85]

In Holden _v._ Hardy, decided in 1898, the Court, in reliance upon the
principle of presumed validity, allowed the burden of proof to remain
with those attacking the validity of a statute and upheld a Utah act
limiting the period of labor in mines to eight hours per day. Taking
cognizance of the fact that labor below the surface of the earth was
attended by risk to person and to health and for these reasons had long
been the subject of State intervention, the Court registered its
willingness to sustain a limitation on freedom of contract which a State
legislature had adjudged "necessary for the preservation of health of
employees," and for which there were "reasonable grounds for believing
that * * * [it was] supported by the facts."[86]

Seven years later, however, a radically altered court was predisposed in
favor of the doctrine of judicial notice, through application of which
it arrived at the conclusion, in Lochner _v._ New York, that a law
restricting employment in bakeries to ten hours per day and 60 hours per
week was an unconstitutional interference with the right of adult
laborers, _sui juris_, to contract with respect to their means of
livelihood. Denying that in so holding that the Court was in effect
substituting its own judgment for that of the legislature, Justice
Peckham, nevertheless, maintained that whether the act was within the
police power of the State was a "question that must be answered by the
Court"; and then, in disregard of the accumulated medical evidence
proffered in support of the act, uttered the following observation: "In
looking through statistics regarding all trades and occupations, it may
be true that the trade of a baker does not appear to be as healthy as
some trades, and is also vastly more healthy than still others. To the
common understanding the trade of a baker has never been regarded as an
unhealthy one. * * * It might be safely affirmed that almost all
occupations more or less affect the health. * * * But are we all, on
that account, at the mercy of the legislati