Court Opinion

ID: 8142315
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-09-09 20:14:41.737558+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:39:32.986481
License: Public Domain

Mb. Justice White
dissenting.
The court below enjoined the execution of the order of the Commission because it was of the opinion that that body had exceeded the powers conferred upon it by the act to regulate commerce, since it had based its order upon the assumption that it was its duty under the act to secure a relatively equal share of the volume of interstate commerce to communities anti places, and therefore that it was its province to alter otherwise legal rates for the *112purpose of correcting the inequalities which otherwise would arise from the competitive rivalry between sections and places. As, in' my opinion, the court below was correct in the view which it took of the order of the Commission, and was right in holding that the power which the order manifested was not conferred by law, I dissent 'from the judgment of reversal now announced. It does not, however, seem to me necessary that I should do more than state the fact of my dissent for the following reasons.: The judgment of reversal is based, not upon the ruling that the Commission possessed the authority to make the order if it was based upon the assertion of power, upon which the court below found the order must necessarily rest, but exclusively upon the theory that the court below, while rightly holding that the Commission had not the power which it assumed that body had exerted in making the order, had nevertheless mistakenly enjoined the order because it did not exert, or attempt to exert, the power which the court conceived had been called into play in making it. In other words, although the opinion now announced excludes the authority which the lower court deemed the Commission had exerted by the order in question, it nevertheless maintains the order because of the conclusion that the order was but an exertion by the Commission of its authority on complaint that a rate was unreasonable of itself, to correct such rate by substituting a reasonable rate therefor. Although I am unable to agree with the reasoning by which the court now gives to the order of the Commission the narrow basis thus stated, as the solution of that question depends upon the idiosyncrasies of this particular case and involves no principle of general importance, it seems to me I am called upon to do no more than simply to-state my inability to agree.
Mr. Justice Holmes and Mr. Justice Lurton join in this dissent.