Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1907-07-17
to help the prosecution. the state.

to help the prosecution, the state
of Minnesota was made defendant
party thru the injunction served on
the attorney general and the state
railway commission. The attorney
general appeared before the court
and asked that the order as apply
ing to him and other state officers
be rescinded, at the ground that a
state cannot be sued by private
parties, according to the constitu-
ton of the United States, and
showed by decision of the U. S.
supreme court that enjoining the
executive officers of the state was
suing the state-the only way in
which the state can be sued. The
case was so plain that even the
skillful legal luminarie, of the rail
roads could not successfully combat
it. Yet Lochren brushed the con-
stitution and supreme court deci-
sion aside, and decided that the
state must remain a party to the
suit. You see, it would not have
done, viewed from the point of
view of the roads, to release the
attorney general, for he could then
have commenced proceedings in the
state courts to enforce the rate
laws. They could not afford to
meet the state outside of Lochren S
jurisdiction. It required infinite
gall for the Judge to nullify the
constitution Of the country, obliter-
ate the rights definitely given the
states by the constitution, and bind
ing the state officers hand and foot,
preventing them from using the
state courts for enforcing state
laws; but Lochren was equal to the
emergency And this in spite of
the that he poses as an old time
democrat, whose cardinal doctrine
is the preservation of states lights.
The corporations have evidently
made up their minds that the
states, with their elective judiciar-
les and other officers holding their
positions at the will of the people,
are too close to the people for the
comfort of the corporations; hence
the states must be shorn of their
power must be reduced to mere
police court institutions Furnishing
ordinary pickpockets, Migrants,
drunkards and other petty criminals,
but not allowed to have anything to
do with regulating the vast con-
Germs that control the industries
and commerce of the state. Those
must be left to a judiciary indie
pendent of the people, getting office
by appointment and holding it for
life. There the corporations can
find reliable servants, like Lochren,
and having found them there OF
placed them there, is assured OF
their services for life. Then lei
the people howl and raise all the
disturbances they want to, let then
pass all the laws they want to; Sc
cure in his place, any one of the
Lochrens can with usurped pre-
negatives and power nullify the
laws and leave the corporations
absolute masters of the situation.
This action has done more thar
anything else to force to the front
the old issue of states rights. The
question whether the people of the
different states have any rights
that federal judges are bound tc
respect will have to be settled. II
the states rights can thus be oblit.
Grated thcre will remain only. one
remedy-the reconstruction of the
United States judiciary system from
top to bottom, so as to get a judi
ciary that does not possess tyran
nical powers over the people.