Lochner / classical-liberal tradition
economic substantive due process, 1897–1937

The Lochner Court (1897-1937) developed a constitutional framework treating economic liberty as a substantive due-process right: courts should strike down progressive economic regulation that interfered with freedom of contract, property rights, and the unenumerated liberties classical liberalism treated as foundational. Cornyn's record substantially aligns with the Lochner framework on economic deregulation, tax cuts, opposition to labor regulation, and the property-rights orientation — and unlike Paxton, his record doesn't carry the use-of-state-power-for-moral-regulation features that Lochner-era classical liberalism was also skeptical of. His free-trade posture is also a closer fit to Lochner-era classical liberalism than the Trump-tariff framework Paxton has embraced. Talarico's economic policy agenda — $15 minimum wage, corporate tax increases, stock buyback tax, antitrust expansion — is the precise pattern the Lochner framework was built to limit. The widest jurisprudential margin for Cornyn on the ballot, reflecting that classical-liberal Republicanism's natural ideal candidate is closer to Cornyn than to either pole of the populist debate.