The Supreme Court's Ironic Use of the "Liberty of Contract"

In the documentary today about the Supreme Court (Episode Two of the show "The Supreme Court") concerning the early twentieth century battles between labor and capital, the narrator explained that the Supreme Court judges used the "liberty of contract" as a justification for many of its pro-business rulings.  As the judges at the time understood it, the "liberty of contract" was the freedom for employers and employees to make their own "contracts" or agreements about how the employee should have worked for the employer.  However, in my opinion, this justification that the judges used was incorrect.  The word "contract" implied that both the employer and the employee were part of the making of the agreement.  Thus, a "one-sided contract" (one in which the employee really had no choice but to stay in the job in order to survive) would not technically be considered a "contract" and would therefore not fall under the "liberty of contract."  In order for something to consist of the "liberty of contract," both the employee and the employer needed to have the freedom to consider other options other than the contract.  Since in the early twentieth century, many employees would literally starve or die from quitting their low-paying jobs, they did not truly have any choice in considering other options and were effectively forced to stay within the jobs they already had.  The pro-labor laws created during this time were actually opening up the "liberty of contract" to the people because they allowed workers to have other job options through minimum wage laws, maximum work hours, and more.  Therefore, ironically, the pro-business rulings of the Supreme Court during this time in favor of the "liberty of contract" were actually restricting people's "liberty of contract."