The rise and fall of Oregon Populism: Legal theory, political culture and public policy, 1868-1895

This study examines partisan competition and Oregon's relationship to the federal system to explain why Oregonians formed a Populist party in 1892. Unlike the Populist parties of the South and Midwest, which emerged in response to one-party political systems that ignored popular agrarian demands for reform, Oregon Populists organized in response to unprecedented federal judicial intervention. Oregonians had a vibrant, competitive two-party system between 1870 and 1886 that successfully translated reformers' antimonopoly ideology into legislation to restructure the tax system, regulate railroad rates, and control Chinese labor. But this legislation was blocked by Judge Matthew P. Deady of the United States District Court for the District of Oregon.;The Oregon Populist party was quickly eclipsed by factionalism within the party and intra-party fusion. By 1895 the U.S. Supreme Court had adopted antagonistic doctrines and reasoning that ensured the failure of Oregon Populism. The Court's laissez-faire constitutionalism signaled the emergence of a modern constitutional order that diminished the role of the state, quelled popular decision making, and centralized power in the national government. It also ensured the end of a unique, vital, democratic political movement. Oregon Populism and its implicit demand for popular sovereignty through state government died in the hands of the federal courts.;Some historians of Populism have emphasized the Populist critique of the economy as the rationale for and defining essence of the party. Oregon Populists justified their formation of a third party on the grounds that the federal courts thwarted their political culture and the traditional powers of state government. Their leader, Governor Sylvester Pennoyer, articulated an alternative vision of government and federal relations rooted in nineteenth century constitutional forms and political ideology and premised on the notion that the state's traditional powers were ample for adjusting to the social and economic dislocation of the late nineteenth century.