The KCIR was extensively debated in social scientific and legal journals. It was also seriously considered in the era’s most powerful legal professional organizations as a general model for managing industrial disputes. However, support for and hostility to the KCIR cut across established ideological alignments: there was no setting where it did not provoke strong disagreement among influential figures. In economics, a heterogeneous group of institutionalists friendly to the KCIR were rebuffed by Kansas officials, while a coherent group of Wisconsin-connected economists articulated a strong case against it. In law, an ideologically diverse group of leading scholars and practitioners nearly succeeded in winning the Kansas Industrial Court Act’s formal endorsement as a uniform law. But an emergent alliance of academic reformers and elite corporate practitioners succeeded in banning its discussion in key organizational settings. The KCIR controversy hastened the end of the legal profession’s involvement in social legislation and helped extinguish American interest in labor courts.