How the Wagner Act Came to Be: A Prospectus

The Wagner Act of 1935, the original National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), has been called "perhaps the most radical piece of legislation ever enacted by the United States Congress."' But Supreme Court interpretations supposedly frustrated the utopian aspirations for a radical restructuring of the workplace." Similarly, according to another commentator, unnecessary language in one of the Court's earliest NLRA cases "drastically undercut the new act's protection of the critical right to strike."'