Source: http://www.chanrobles.com/usa/us_supremecourt/300/608/case.php
Timestamp: 2019-10-15 17:02:09
Document Index: 322711371

Matched Legal Cases: ['art. 4', '§ 4', '§ 16', '§ 14', '§ 4', '§ 14', '§ 6']

The act is chapter 357 of the Acts of 1934. It recites the existence of demoralizing trade practices in the dairy industry, threatening to interrupt the supply of pure and wholesome milk for the inhabitants of the Commonwealth and producing an economic emergency so acute and destructive as to call for corrective measures. It establishes chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The suit is for an injunction to restrain the members of the commission from enforcing the statute or the regulations made thereunder. One of the two plaintiffs (Highland Farms Dairy, Incorporated), which will be spoken of as "Highland," has a creamery for the pasteurizing and treatment of milk at Washington in the District of Columbia. For that purpose, it buys milk from farmers in Virginia and Maryland. Its entire output of bottled milk it sells to the other plaintiff, Luther W. High, who has retail stores in Virginia and elsewhere for the sale of ice cream, milk and other dairy products. A regulation adopted by the commission on March 27, 1936, set up a market area, described as the Arlington-Alexandria Milk Market, within which High is engaged in business. Minimum chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The power of a state to fix a minimum price for milk in order to save producers, and with them the consuming public, from price-cutting so destructive as to endanger the supply was affirmed by this Court in Nebbia v. New York, 291 U. S. 502, and in other cases afterwards. Hegeman Farms Corp. v. Baldwin, 293 U. S. 163; Borden's Farm Products Co. v. Ten Eyck, 297 U. S. 251. Appellants are not asking us to undo what was there done. They take the ground, however, that the statute of Virginia is open to objections that were inapplicable to the statute of New York. The present grounds of criticism will be considered one by one.
The General Assembly of the Commonwealth in setting up the Milk Commission did not charge it with a duty to prescribe a scale of prices in every portion of the state. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The Constitution of the United States, in the circumstances here exhibited, has no voice upon the subject. The statute challenged as invalid is one adopted by a state. This removes objections that might be worthy of consideration if we were dealing with an act of Congress. How power shall be distributed by a state among its governmental organs is commonly, if not always, a question for the state itself. Nothing in the distribution here attempted supplies the basis for an exception. The statute is not a denial of a republican form of government. Constitution, art. 4, § 4. Even if it were, the enforcement of that guarantee, according to the settled doctrine, is for Congress, not the courts. Pacific Telephone Co. v. Oregon, 223 U. S. 118; Davis v. Hildebrant, 241 U. S. 565; Ohio ex rel. Bryant v. Akron Park District, 281 U. S. 74, 281 U. S. 79-80. Cases such as Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, 293 U. S. 388, and Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U. S. 495, cited by appellants, are quite beside the point. What was in controversy there was the distribution of power between President and Congress, or between Congress and administrative officers or commissions, a controversy affecting the structure of the national government as established by the provisions of the national Constitution.
So far as the objection to delegation is founded on the Constitution of Virginia, it is answered by a decision of the highest court of the state. In Reynolds v. Milk Commission, 163 Va. 957, 179 S.E. 507, the Supreme Court of Appeals passed upon the validity of the statute now in chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
2. The statute is not invalid in its present application by reason of a provision for the cancellation of the prices established for a market, if cancellation is requested by a majority of the producers and distributors in the area affected. [Footnote 1]
The argument is made that the effect of that provision is to vest in unofficial agencies, capriciously selected, a power of repeal to be exercised at pleasure. The case chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
of Eubank v. Richmond, 226 U. S. 137, is cited for the proposition that this cannot be done consistently with the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution. Delegation to official agencies is one thing, there being nothing in the concept of due process to require that a particular agency shall have a monopoly of power; delegation to private interests or unofficial groups with arbitrary capacity to make their will prevail as law may be something very different. Cf., however, Cusack Co. v. Chicago, 242 U. S. 526, 242 U. S. 531. Such is the appellants' argument when its implications are developed.
Without acceptance or rejection of the distinction in its application to this statute, we think it is enough to say that the power of cancellation has not been exercised or even threatened. The controversy in that regard is abstract and conjectural. Abrams v. Van Schaick, 293 U. S. 188. Moreover, if a provision so subordinate were at any time to fail, the saving clause in § 16 would cause the residue to stand.
This definition, we are told, takes in the plaintiff Highland, who buys milk and sells it in interstate commerce, and does so with the expectation that, upon arrival in Virginia the milk will be resold. But Highland is not subject to the provisions of the act, and so the Milk Commission has ruled. No matter what the definition of a distributor may be, sales are not affected by any restriction as to price unless made chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
within the boundaries of a designated market area. The sections quoted in the margin point fairly to that conclusion. [Footnote 2] Highland land in Washington may sell to High in Virginia, and High may buy from Highland at any price they please. not till the milk is resold in Virginia within a market area will the price minimum apply, and then only to the price to be charged on the resale. Cf. Wiloil Corp. v. Pennsylvania, 294 U. S. 169, 294 U. S. 175; Sonneborn Bros. v. Cureton, 262 U. S. 506; Baldwin v. G.A.F. Seelig, Inc., 294 U. S. 511. If there could be any doubt about this as a matter of construction, the doubt would be dispelled by the administrative practice and by the warning of the statute, expressed in § 14, that operations in interstate commerce shall not be deemed to be affected. So chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
also as to the requirement of a license expressed in § 4. [Footnote 3] High needs a license to the extent that he sells at retail to consumers in Virginia. Highland does not need one, and the commission is not asking it to apply for one, because its business, as now conducted with persons in Virginia, is interstate exclusively. Clumsy draftsmanship may have spread a fog about the section when viewed in isolation or taken from its setting. The fog scatters when we recall the provisions of § 14 and the administrative practice. Appellants' fears are visionary.
The obvious purpose of the license is to provide the commission and the members of the local boards with a record of the distributors and producers subject to the act. Supervision and enforcement are thus likely to be easier. No inference is permissible that anyone was intended to be excluded because of favor or caprice. Lieberman v. Van De Carr, 199 U. S. 552. Indeed, the statute makes provision (§ 6) that an order refusing to issue a license, or suspending or revoking one, may be reviewed on appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeals. There is sedulous protection against oppression or abuse of power. One who is required to take out a license will not be heard to complain, in advance of application, that there is danger of chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
refusal. Lehon v. Atlanta, 242 U. S. 53, 242 U. S. 56; Smith v. Cahoon, 283 U. S. 553, 283 U. S. 562. He should apply and see what happens.
MR. JUSTICE VAN DEVANTER, MR. JUSTICE McREYNOLDS, MR. JUSTICE SUTHERLAND, and MR. JUSTICE BUTLER do not assent to so much of the opinion as attributes to the state a power to fix minimum and maximum prices to be charged in the sale of milk, their views on this question being reflected by what was said on their behalf by MR. JUSTICE McREYNOLDS in Nebbia v. New York, 291 U. S. 502, 291 U. S. 539-559. In other respects they concur in the opinion.