Court Opinion

ID: 9841838
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-22 20:08:26.247817+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:05:03.998571
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice. Haelaít,
dissenting.
I dissent from the opinion and judgment in this case. Taken in connection with other decisions defining the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission, the present decision, it seems to me, goes far to make that commission a useless body for all practical purposes, and to defeat many of the important objects designed to be accomplished by the. various enactments of Congress relating to interstate commerce. The Commission was established to protect the public against the improper practices of transportation companies engaged in commerce among the several States. It has been left, it is true, with power to make reports, and to issue protests. But it has been shorn, by judicial interpretation, of authority to do anything of an effective character. It is denied many of the powers which, in my .judgment, were intended to be conferred upon it. Besides, the acts of Congress are now so construed as to place communities on the lines of interstate .commerce at the mercy of competing railroad companies engaged in such commerce. The judgment in this case, if I do not misapprehend its scope and effect, *177proceeds upon the ground that railroad companies, when competitors for interstate business at certain points, may, in order to secure traffic for and at those points, establish rates that will enable them to accomplish that result, although such rates may discriminate against intermediate points. Under such an interpretation of the statutes in question, they may well be regarded as recognizing the authority of competing railroad companies engaged in interstate commerce — when their interests will be subserved thereby — to build up favored centres of population at the expense of the business of the country at large. I cannot believe that Congress intended any such result, nor do I think that its enactments, properly interpreted, would lead to such a result.