Court Opinion

ID: 9419524
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:49:57.171018+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:42:09.059386
License: Public Domain

Me. Chief Justice Stone,
dissenting:
This Court has never doubted, and I do not doubt, that transactions across state lines which often attend and are incidental to the formation and performance of an insurance contract, such as the use of facilities for interstate *563communication and transportation, are acts of interstate commerce subject to regulation by the federal government under the commerce clause. Nor do I doubt that the business of insurance as presently conducted has in many aspects such interstate manifestations and such effects on interstate commerce as may subject it to the appropriate exercise of federal power. See Polish Alliance v. Labor Board, post, p. 643.
But such are not the questions now before us. We are not concerned here with the power of Congress to do what it has not attempted to do, but with the question whether Congress in enacting the Sherman Act has asserted its power over the business of insurance.
The questions which the Government has raised, advisedly it would seem (cf. New York Life Ins. Co. v. Deer Lodge County, 231 U. S. 495, 499), by the indictment in this case, as it has been interpreted by the District Court below, are quite different from the question, discussed in the Court’s opinion, whether the incidental use of the facilities of interstate commerce and transportation in the conduct of the fire insurance business renders the business itself “commerce” within the meaning of the Sherman Act and the commerce clause. The questions here are whether the business of entering into contracts in one state, insuring against the risk of loss by fire of property in others, is itself interstate commerce; and whether an agreement or conspiracy to fix the premium rates of such contracts and in other ways to restrict competition in effecting policies of fire insurance, violates the Sherman Act. The court below has answered “no” to both of these questions. I think that its answer is right and its judgment should be affirmed, both on principle and in view of the permanency which should be given to the construction of the commerce clause and the Sherman Act in this respect, which has until now been consistently adhered to by all branches of the Government.
*564The case comes here on direct appeal by the Government from the District Court’s judgment dismissing the indictment. Under the provisions of the Criminal Appeals Act, 18 U. S. C. § 682, the only questions open for decision here are whether the District Court’s constructions of the commerce clause and of the Sherman Act, on which it rested its decision, are the correct ones. United States v. Borden Co., 308 U. S. 188, 193; United States v. Wayne Pump Co., 317 U. S. 200, 208; United States v. Swift & Co., 318 U. S. 442, 444.
For the particular facts to which the court below applied the Constitution and the Sherman Act we must look to the indictment as the District Court has construed it. And we must accept that construction, for by the provisions of the Criminal Appeals Act the District Court’s construction of the indictment is reviewable on appeal not by this Court but by the Circuit Court of Appeals. United States v. Patten, 226 U. S. 525, 535; United States v. Colgate & Co., 250 U. S. 300, 306; United States v. Borden Co., supra.
The District Court pointed out that the offenses charged by the indictment are a conspiracy to fix arbitrary and non-competitive premium rates on fire insurance sold in several named states, and by means of that conspiracy to restrain and to monopolize trade and commerce in fire insurance in those states. The court went on to say:
“To constitute a violation of the Sherman Act, the restraint and monopoly denounced must be that of interstate trade or commerce, and, unless the restraint and monopoly charged in the indictment be restraint or monopoly in interstate trade or commerce, the indictment must fall.
“It is not a question here of whether the defendants participated in some incidental way in interstate commerce or used in some instances the facilities of interstate commerce, but is rather whether the activities complained *565of as constituting the business of insurance would themselves constitute interstate trade or commerce, and whether defendants’ method of conducting same amounted to restraint or monopoly of same. It is not a question as to whether or not Congress had power to regulate the insurance companies or some phases of their activities, but rather whether Congress did so by the Sherman Act.
“Persons may be engaged in interstate commerce, yet, if the restraint or monopoly complained of is not itself a restraint or monopoly of interstate trade or commerce, they may not be convicted of violation of the Sherman Act. The fact that they may use the mails and instru-mentalities of interstate commerce and communication, and be subject to Federal regulations relating thereto, would not make applicable the Sherman Act to interstate commerce or to. activities which were not commerce at all.
“The whole case, therefore, depends upon the question as to whether or not the business of insurance is interstate trade or commerce, and if so, whether the transactions alleged in the indictment constitute interstate commerce.”
In short the District Court construed the indictment as charging restraints not in the incidental use of the mails or other instrumentalities of interstate commerce, nor in the insurance of goods moving in interstate commerce, but in the “business of insurance.” And by the “business of insurance” it necessarily meant the business of writing contracts of insurance, for the indictment charges only restraints in entering into such contracts, not in their performance,1 and the Court deemed it irrelevant that in *566the negotiation and performance of the contracts appellees “may use the mails and instrumentalities of interstate commerce.” It held that that business is not in itself interstate commerce, and that the alleged conspiracies to restrain and to monopolize that business were not, without more, in restraint of interstate commerce and consequently were not violations of the Sherman Act.
This construction of the indictment as confined in its scope to a conspiracy to fix premium rates and otherwise restrain competition in the business of writing insurance contracts, and to monopolize that business — a construction requiring decision of the question whether that business is interstate commerce — is adopted by the Government. Its brief in this Court states the “questions presented” as follows:
“1. Whether the fire insurance business is in commerce.
“2. Whether the fire insurance business is subject to the constitutional power of Congress to regulate commerce among the several states.
“3. Whether, if so, the Sherman Act is violated by an agreement among fire insurance companies to fix and maintain arbitrary and non-competitive rates and to monopolize trade and commerce in fire insurance, in part through boycotts directed at companies not part of the conspiracy and the agents and purchasers of insurance who deal with them.”
*567The numerous and unvarying decisions of this Court that “insurance is not commerce”2 have never denied that acts of interstate commerce may be incidental to the business of writing and performing contracts of insurance, or that those incidental acts are subject to the commerce power. Our decisions on this subject have uniformly rested on the ground that the formation of an insurance contract, even though it insures against risk of loss to property located in other states or moving in interstate commerce, is not interstate commerce, and that although the incidents of interstate communication and transportation which often attend the formation and performance of an insurance contract are interstate commerce, they do not serve to render the business of insurance itself interstate commerce. See Hooper v. California, 155 U. S. 648, 655; New York Life Ins. Co. v. Deer Lodge County, 231 U. S. 495, 508-9.
If an insurance company in New York executes and delivers, either in that state or another, a policy insuring the owner of a building in New Jersey against loss by fire, no act of interstate commerce has occurred. True, if the owner comes to New York to procure the insurance or after delivery in New York carries the policy to New Jersey, or the company sends it there by mail or messenger, such would be acts of interstate commerce. Similarly if the owner pays the premiums by mail to the company in New *568York, or the company’s New Jersey agent sends the premiums to New York, or the company in New York sends money to New Jersey on the occurrence of the loss insured against, acts of interstate commerce would occur. But the power of the Congress to regulate them is derived, not from its authority to regulate the business of insurance, but from its power to regulate interstate communication and transportation. And such incidental use of the facilities of interstate commerce does not render the insurance business itself interstate commerce. Nor is the nature of a single insurance transaction or a few such transactions not involving interstate commerce altered in that regard merely because their number is multiplied. The power of Congress to regulate interstate communication and transportation incidental to the insurance business is not any more or any less because the number of insurance transactions is great or small. The Congressional power to regulate does not extend to the formation and performance of insurance contracts save only as the latter may affect communication and transportation which are interstate commerce or may otherwise be found by Congress to affect transactions of interstate commerce. And even then, such effects on the commerce as do not involve restraints in competition in the marketing of goods and services are not within the reach of the Sherman Act. That such are the controlling principles has been fully recognized by this Court in the numerous cases which have .held that the business of insurance is not commerce or as such subject to the commerce power. See, for example, New York Life Ins. Co. v. Deer Lodge County, supra, 508-9.
These principles are not peculiar to insurance contracts. They are equally applicable to other types of contracts which relate to things or events in other states than that of their execution, but which do not contain any obligation to engage in any form of interstate commerce. The *569parties to them are not engaged in interstate commerce, for such commerce is not necessarily involved in or prerequisite to the formation of such contracts and they do not in their performance necessarily involve the doing of interstate business. The mere formation of a contract to sell and deliver cotton or coal or crude rubber is not in itself an interstate transaction and does not involve any act of interstate commerce because cotton, coal and crude rubber are subjects of interstate or foreign commerce, or because in fact performance of the contract may not be effected without some precedent or subsequent movement interstate of the commodities sold, or because there may be incidental use of the facilities of interstate commerce or transportation in the formation of the contract. Ware & Leland v. Mobile County, 209 U. S. 405, 411-13; Western Live Stock v. Bureau of Revenue, 303 U. S. 250, 253. Compare Dahnke-Walker Co. v. Bondurant, 257 U. S. 282, 292. That the principle underlying that conclusion is the same as that underlying the decisions of this Court that the business of insurance is not interstate commerce, has been repeatedly recognized and affirmed. Paul v. Virginia, 8 Wall. 168, 183; Hooper v. California, 155 U. S. 648, 654; Ware & Leland v. Mobile County, supra, 411; Engel v. O’Malley, 219 U. S. 128, 139; New York Life Ins. Co. v. Deer Lodge County, supra, 511-12; Blumenstock Bros. v. Curtis Publishing Co., 252 U. S. 436, 443; Hill v. Wallace, 259 U. S. 44, 69; Chicago Board of Trade v. Olsen, 262 U. S. 1, 32-3; Moore v. New York Cotton Exchange, 270 U. S. 593, 604; Western Live Stock v. Bureau of Revenue, supra; and see Hopkins v. United States, 171 U. S. 578, 588-9, 602.
The conclusion that the business of writing insurance is not interstate commerce could not rightly be otherwise unless we were to depart from the universally accepted view that the act of making any contract which does not stipulate for the performance of an act or transaction of *570interstate commerce is not in itself interstate commerce. And this has been held to be true even though the contract be effected by exchange of communications across state lines, see New York Life Ins. Co. v. Cravens, 178 U. S. 389, 400; Ware & Leland v. Mobile County, supra; New York Life Ins. Co. v. Deer Lodge County, supra, 509, a point which need not be considered here for the indictment makes no charge that the policies written by ap-pellees are thus effected, but alleges only that they are “sold” by the defendants in certain named states.
Undoubtedly contracts so entered into for the sale of commodities which move in interstate commerce, may become the implements for restraints in marketing those commodities, and when so used may for that reason be within the Sherman Act, see Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U. S. 197, 334, 338; United States v. Patten, supra, 543-4; Standard Oil Co. v. United States, 283 U. S. 163, 168-9. Compare Thames & Mersey Ins. Co. v. United States, 237 U. S. 19. But it is quite another matter to say that the contracts are themselves interstate commerce or that restraints in competition as to their terms or conditions are within the Sherman Act, in the absence of a showing that the purpose or effect is to restrain competition in the marketing of the goods or services to which the contracts relate. Compare Hill v. Wallace, supra, 69, with Chicago Board of Trade v. Olsen, supra, 31-3; Blumenstock Bros. v. Curtis Publishing Co., supra, with Indiana Farmer’s Guide Co. v. Prairie Farmer Co., 293 U. S. 268; Moore v. New York Cotton Exchange, supra, with United States v. Patten, supra.
In this respect insurance contracts do not in point of law stand on any different footing as regards the Sherman Act. If contracts of insurance are in fact made the instruments of restraint in the marketing of goods and services in or affecting interstate commerce, they are not beyond the reach of the Sherman Act more than contracts *571for the sale of commodities, — contracts which, not in themselves interstate commerce, may nevertheless be used as the means of its restraint. But since trade in articles of commerce is not the subject matter of contracts of insurance, it is evident that not only is the writing of insurance policies not interstate commerce but there is little scope for their use in restraining competition in the marketing of goods and services in or affecting the commerce.
The contract of insurance makes no stipulation for the sale or delivery of commodities in interstate commerce or for any other interstate transaction. It provides only for the payment of a sum of money in the event of the loss insured against, and it is no necessary consequence of the alleged restraints on competition in fixing premiums that interstate commerce will be restrained. We have no occasion to consider the argument which the court below rejected, that the indictment charges that the conspiracy to fix premiums adversely affects interstate commerce because in some instances the commodities insured move across state lines, or because interstate communication and transportation are in some instances incidental to the business of issuing insurance contracts. This is so both because, as we have said, we are bound by the District Court’s construction of the indictment, and, more importantly, because such effects on interstate commerce, as will presently appear, are not within the reach of the Sherman Act.
The conclusion seems inescapable that the formation of insurance contracts, like many others, and the business of so doing, is not, without more, commerce within the protection of the commerce clause of the Constitution and thereby, in large measure, excluded from state control and regulation. See Hooper v. California, supra, 655; New York Life Ins. Co. v. Deer Lodge County, supra. This conclusion seems, upon analysis, not only correct on *572principle and in complete harmony with the uniform rulings by which this Court has held that the formation of all types of contract which do not stipulate for the performance of acts of interstate commerce, are likewise not interstate commerce, but it has the support of an unbroken line of decisions of this Court beginning with Paul v. Virginia, seventy-five years ago, and extending down to the present time. In 1913 this Court was asked, on elaborate briefs and arguments, such as are now addressed to us, to overrule Paul v. Virginia, supra, and the many cases which have followed it. New York Life Ins. Co. v. Deer Lodge County, supra. See also New York Life Ins. Co. v. Cravens, supra. In the Deer Lodge case the mode of conducting the insurance business was almost identical with that alleged here (231 U. S. at 499-500); it was strenuously urged, as here, that by reason of the great size of insurance companies “modern life insurance had taken on essentially a national and international character” (231 U. S. at 507); and, as here, that the use of the mails incident to the formation of the contract and the interstate transmission of premiums and the proceeds of the policies “constitute ‘a current of commerce among the states’ ” (231U. S. at 509). All these arguments were rejected, and the business of insurance was held not to be interstate commerce, on the grounds which we have stated and think valid — but which the Government’s brief and the opinion of the Court in this case have failed to notice.
If the business of entering into insurance contracts is not interstate commerce, it seems plain that agreements to fix premium rates, or other restraints on competition in entering into such contracts, are not violations of the Sherman Act. As we have often had occasion to point out, the restraints prohibited by the Sherman Act are of competition in the marketing of goods or services whenever the competition occurs in or affects interstate commerce in those goods or services. See Apex Hosiery Co. v. Leader, 310 U. S. 469, 495-501, and cases cited. The contract of *573insurance does not undertake to supply or market goods or services and there is no suggestion that policies of insurance when issued are articles of commerce or that after their issue they are sold in the market as such, or, if they were, that the formation of the contract would itself be interstate commerce. See Hooper v. California, supra; New York Life Ins. Co. v. Deer Lodge County, supra, 510; cf. Ware & Leland v. Mobile County, supra; Moore v. New York Cotton Exchange, supra.
No more does the performance of an. insurance contract involving the payment of premiums by the insured and the payment of losses by the insurer involve the marketing of goods or services. The indictment here, as the District Court pointed out, charges restraints on competition in fixing the terms and conditions of insurance contracts. And even if we assume, although the District Court did not mention it, that the indictment also charges restraints on the performance of such contracts, it is plain that such restraints on the performance as well as the formation of the contracts cannot operate as restraints on competition in the marketing of goods or services. Such restraints are not within the purview of the Sherman Act. Compare Federal Club v. National League, 259 U. S. 200, 209; United Mine Workers v. Coronado Coal Co., 259 U. S. 344, 410-411; Blumenstock Bros. v. Curtis Publishing Co., supra; Moore v. New York Cotton Exchange, supra. The practice of law is not commerce, nor, at least outside the District of Columbia, is it subject to the Sherman Act, and it does not become so because a law firm attracts clients from without the state or sends its members or juniors to. other states to argue cases, or because its clients use the interstate mails to pay their fees. Federal Club v. National League, supra.
It would be strange, indeed, if Congress, in adopting the Sherman Act in 1890, more than twenty years after this Court had supposedly settled the question, had considered that the business of insurance was interstate com*574merce or had contemplated that the Sherman Act was to apply to it. Nothing in its legislative history suggests that it was intended to apply to the business of insurance.3 The legislative materials indicate that Congress was primarily concerned with restraints of competition in the marketing of goods sold in interstate commerce, which were clearly within the federal commerce power.4 And while the Act is not limited to restraints of commerce in physical goods, see e. g., Atlantic Cleaners & Dyers v. United States, 286 U. S. 427, there is no reason to' suppose that Congress intended the Act to apply to matters in which, under prevailing decisions of this Court, commerce was not involved. On the contrary the House committee, in reporting the bill which was adopted without change, declared: “No attempt is made to invade the legislative authority of the several States or even to occupy doubtful grounds. No system of laws can be devised by Congress alone which would effectually protect the people of the *575United States against the evils and oppression of trusts and monopolies. Congress has no authority to deal, generally, with the subject within the States, and the States have no authority to legislate in respect of commerce between the several States or with foreign nations.” 5
In 1904 and again in 1905 President Roosevelt urged “that the Congress carefully consider whether the power of the Bureau of Corporations cannot constitutionally be extended to cover interstate transactions in insurance.” 6 *576The American Bar Association, executives of leading insurance companies, and others joined in the request.7 Numerous bills providing for federal regulation of varioús aspects of the insurance business were introduced between 1902 and 1906 8 but the judiciary committees of both House and Senate concluded that the regulation of the business of marine, fire and life insurance was beyond Congressional power. Sen. Rep. No. 4406, 59th Cong., 1st Sess.; H. R. Rep. No. 2491,59th Cong., 1st Sess., 12-25. The House committee stated that “the question as to whether or not insurance is commerce has passed beyond the realm of argument, because the Supreme Court of the United States has said many times for a great number of years that insurance is not commerce.” (p. 13.)9
*577And when in 1914, one year after the decision in New York Life Ins. Co. v. Deer Lodge County, supra, Congress by the Clayton Act, 38 Stat. 730, amended the Sherman Act and defined the term “commerce” as used in that Act, it gave no indication that it questioned or desired this Court to overrule the decision of the Deer Lodge case and those preceding it. On the contrary Mr. Webb, who was in charge of the bill in the House of Representatives, stated that “insurance companies are not reached as the Supreme Court has held that their contracts or policies are not interstate commerce.” 51 Cong. Rec. 9390.10
*578This Court, throughout the seventy-five years since the decision of Paul v. Virginia, has adhered to the view that the business of insurance is not interstate commerce.11 Such has ever since been the practical construction by the other branches of the Government of the application to insurance of the commerce clause and the Sherman Act. Long continued practical construction of the Constitution or a statute is of persuasive force in determining its meaning and proper application. Pocket Veto Case, 279 U. S. 655, 688-90; Federal Trade Commission v. Bunte Bros., 312 U. S. 349, 351-2; United States v. Cooper Corp., 312 U. S. 600, 613-14. It is significant that in the fifty years since the enactment of the Sherman Act the Government has not until now sought to apply it to the business of insurance,12 and that Congress has continued to regard *579insurance as not constituting interstate commerce. Although often asked to do so it has repeatedly declined to pass legislation regulating the insurance business and to sponsor constitutional amendments subjecting it to Congressional control.13
The decision now rendered repudiates this long-continued and consistent construction of the commerce clause and the Sherman Act. We do not say that that is in itself a sufficient ground for declining to join in the Court’s decision. This Court has never committed itself to any rule or policy that it will not “bow to the lessons of experience and the force of better reasoning” by overruling a mistaken precedent. See cases collected in Justice Brandeis’s dissenting opinion in Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co., 285 U. S. 393, 406-9, notes 1-4, and in Smith v. Allwright, 321 U. S. 649, 665, n. 10; and see Legal Tender Cases, 12 Wall. 457, 553-54. This is especially the case when the meaning of the Constitution is at issue and a mistaken construction is one which cannot be corrected by legislative action.
To give blind adherence to a rule or policy that no decision of this Court is to be overruled would be itself to overrule many decisions of the Court which do not accept that view. But the rule of stare decisis embodies a wise policy because it is often more important that a rule of law be settled than that it be settled right. This is especially so where, as here, Congress is not without regulatory power. Cf. Penn Dairies v. Milk Control Comm’n, 318 U. S. 261, 271, 275. The question then is not whether an earlier decision should ever be overruled, but whether a *580particular decision ought to be. And before overruling a precedent in any case it is the duty of the Court to make certain that more harm will not be done in rejecting than in retaining a rule of even dubious validity. Compare Helvering v. Griffiths, 318 U. S. 371, 400-4.
From what has been said it seems plain that our decisions that the business of insurance is not commerce are not unsound in principle, and involve no inconsistency or lack of harmony with accepted doctrine. They place no field of activity beyond the control of both the national and state governments as did Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U. S. 251, overruled three years ago by a unanimous Court in United States v. Darby, 312 U. S. 100, 117. On the contrary the ruling that insurance is not commerce, and is therefore unaffected by the restrictions which the commerce clause imposes on state legislation, removed the most serious obstacle to regulation of that business by the states. Through their plenary power over domestic and foreign corporations which are not engaged in interstate commerce, the states have developed extensive and effective systems of regulation of the insurance business, often solving regulatory problems of a local character with which it would be impractical or difficult for Congress to deal through the exercise of the commerce power. And in view of the broad powers of the federal government to regulate matters which, though not themselves commerce, nevertheless affect interstate commerce, Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U. S. 111; Polish Alliance v. Labor Board, supra, there can be no doubt of the power of Congress if it so desires to regulate many aspects of the insurance business mentioned in this indictment.
But the immediate and only practical effect of the decision now rendered is to withdraw from the states, in large measure, the regulation of insurance and to confer it on the national government, which has adopted no legis*581lative policy and evolved no scheme of regulation with respect to the business of insurance. Congress having taken no action, the present decision substitutes, for the varied and detailed state regulation developed over a period of years, the limited aim and indefinite command of the Sherman Act for the suppression of restraints on competition in the marketing of goods and services in or affecting interstate commerce, to be applied by the courts to the insurance business as best they may.
In the years since this Court’s pronouncement that insurance is not commerce came to be regarded as settled constitutional doctrine, vast efforts have gone into the development of schemes of state regulation and into the organization of the insurance business in conformity to such regulatory requirements. Vast amounts of capital have been invested in the business in reliance on the permanence of the existing system of state regulation. How far that system is now supplanted is not, and in the nature of things could not well be, explained in the Court’s opinion. The Government admits that statutes of at least five states will be invalidated by the decision as in conflict with the Sherman Act, and the argument in this Court reveals serious doubt whether many others may not also be inconsistent with that Act. The extent to which still other state statutes will now be invalidated as in conflict with the commerce clause has not been explored in any detail in the briefs and argument or in the Court’s opinion.
Certainly there cannot but be serious doubt as to the validity of state taxes which may now be thought to discriminate against the interstate commerce, cf. Philadelphia Fire Assn. v. New York, 119 U. S. 110; or the extent to which conditions may be imposed on the right of insurance companies to do business within a state; or in general the extent to which the state may regulate whatever aspects of the business are now for the first time to be *582regarded as interstate commerce. While this Court no longer adheres to the inflexible rule that a state cannot in some measure regulate interstate commerce, the application of the test presently applied requires “a consideration of all the relevant facts and circumstances” in order to determine whether the matter is an appropriate one for local regulation and whether the regulation does not unduly burden interstate commerce, Parker v. Brown, 317 U. S. 341, 362 — a determination which can only be made upon a case-to-case basis. Only time and costly experience can give the answers.
Congress made the choice against so drastic a change when in 1906 it rejected the proposals to assume national control over the insurance business. The report of the House Committee on the Judiciary pointed out that “all of the evils and wrongs complained of are subject to the exclusive regulation of- State legislative power” and added: “assuming that Congress declares that insurance is commerce and the Supreme Court holds the legislation constitutional, how much could Congress regulate, and what effect would such legislation have? It would disturb the very substructure of government by precipitating a violent conflict between the police power of the States and the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. To uphold the Federal power would be to extinguish the police power of the State by the legislation of Congress. In other words, Congress would admit corporations into the respective States and have the entire regulating power.” H. R. Rep. No. 2491, 59th Cong., 1st Sess., 13,15-16. See id. 18.
Had Congress chosen to legislate for such parts of the insurance business as could be found to affect interstate commerce, whether by making the Sherman Act applicable to them or by regulation in some other form, it could have resolved many of these questions of conflict between *583federal and state regulation. But this Court can decide only the questions before it in particular cases. Its action in now overturning the precedents of seventy-five years governing a business of such volume and of such wide ramifications, cannot fail to be the occasion for loosing a flood of litigation and of legislation, state and national, in order to establish a new boundary between state and national power, raising questions which cannot be answered for years to come, during which a great business and the regulatory officers of every state must be harassed by all the doubts and difficulties inseparable from a realignment of the distribution of power in our federal system. These considerations might well stay a reversal of long-established doctrine which promises so little of advantage and so much of harm. For me these considerations are controlling.
The judgment should be affirmed.
Mr. Justice Frankfurter:
I join in the opinion of the Chief Justice.
The relations of the insurance business to national commerce and finance, I have no doubt, afford constitutional authority for appropriate regulation by Congress of the business of insurance, certainly not to a less extent than Congressional regulation touching agriculture. See, e. g., Smith v. Kansas City Title Co., 255 U. S. 180; Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U. S. 111. But the opinion of the Chief Justice leaves me equally without doubt that by the enactment of the Sherman Act in 1890, Congress did not mean to disregard the then accepted conception of the constitutional basis for the regulation of the insurance business. And the evidence is overwhelming that the inapplicability of the Sherman Act, in its contemporaneous setting, to insurance transactions such as those charged by this indictment has been confirmed and not modified by *584Congressional attitude and action in the intervening fifty years. There is no Congressional warrant therefore for bringing about the far-reaching dislocations which the opinions of the Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Jackson adumbrate.

 It charges an agreement (a) to fix premium rates, (b) to fix commissions paid, (c) to adopt reclassifications of risks on the basis of which premium rates are fixed, (d) to adhere to standard terms, conditions, and clauses, in the insurance contract, (e) to withhold reinsurance facilities from non-members of the South-Eastern Underwriters *566Association, (f) to withdraw from and refuse to enter agencies representing non-members, (g) to boycott and withhold patronage from purchasers of insurance from non-members, (h) to disparage the services and facilities of non-members, (i) to establish and maintain rating bureaus to police and maintain these agreements, (j) to establish and maintain boards and groups of agents for the same purpose. There is no allegation that commissions are paid otherwise than on the entering into of the contracts. The indictment thus charges only restraints in the terms of the insurance contracts and restraints, by boycotts, in competition in entering into such contracts and in entering into contracts of reinsurance.

 E. g., Paul v. Virginia, 8 Wall. 168; Ducat v. Chicago, 10 Wall. 410; Liverpool Insurance Co. v. Massachusetts, 10 Wall. 566; Philadelphia Fire Assn. v. New York, 119 U. S. 110; Hooper v. California, 155 U. S. 648; Noble v. Mitchell, 164 U. S. 367; Orient Insurance Co. v. Daggs, 172 U. S. 557; New York Life Ins. Co. v. Cravens, 178 U. S. 389; Nutting v. Massachusetts, 183 U. S. 553; New York Life Ins. Co. v. Deer Lodge County, 231 U. S. 495; Northwestern Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Wisconsin, 247 U. S. 132; National Insurance Co. v. Wanberg, 260 U. S. 71; Bothwell v. Buckbee, Mears Co., 275 U. S. 274. See also Doyle v. Continental Ins. Co., 94 U. S. 535, overruled on other grounds by Terral v. Burke Construction Co., 257 U. S. 529.

 The decisions of this Court that the negotiation of a contract between citizens of different states is not interstate commerce were known to and accepted by Congress. In the course of the debates in the Senate on the original bill introduced by Senator Sherman, Senator Turpie, discussing the extent of the federal commerce power, stated, “I recollect one judicial decision upon this subject very definitely. The Supreme Court has decided that insurance is not commerce. . . .” 21 Cong. Ree. 2556. During subsequent debates on that bill Senator Hoar, who later took charge of the revised bill reported by the Judiciary Committee and ultimately enacted, 21 Cong. Ree. 3145 et seq., denied the existence of federal substantive power, under the commerce clause or Article HI, § 2, over contracts between citizens of different states, asserting that Senator Sherman’s bill could be supported only as a regulation of the “importation, transportation, or sale of articles. 1 . 21 Cong. Rec. 2567. See also the statements of Senator Eustis at 21 Cong. Rec. 2646,2651-2.

 See Senator Sherman’s original bill, S. 3445, 50th Cong., S. 1, 51st Cong., and his statement at 21 Cong. Rec. 2562. Texts of the bill throughout its various amendments are set out in Bills and Debates Relating to Trusts, Sen. Doc. No. 147, 57th Cong., 2d Sess. (1903).

 H. R. Rep. No. 1707, 51st Cong., 1st Sess., p. 1. See also the statement on the floor of the House by Mr. Culberson, in charge of the bill, “There is no attempt to exercise any doubtful authority on this subject, but the bill is confined strictly and alone to subjects over which, confessedly, there is no question about the legislative power of Congress . . .” 21 Cong. Rec. 4089. And see the statement of Senator Edmunds, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee which reported out the bill in the form in which it passed, that in drafting that bill the committee thought that “we would frame a bill that should be clearly within our constitutional power, that we should make its definition out of terms that were well known to the law already, and would leave it to the courts in the first instance to say how far they could carry it or its definitions as applicable to each particular case as it might arise.” 21 Cong. Rec. 3148. Similarly Senator Hoar, a member of that committee who with Senator Edmunds was in charge of the bill, stated “Now we are dealing with an offense against interstate or international commerce, which the State can not regulate by penal enactment, and we find the United States without any common law. The great thing that this bill does, except affording a remedy, is to extend the common-law principles, which protected fair competition in trade in old times in England, to international and interstate commerce in the United States.” 21 Cong. Rec. 3152.

 Messages of the Presidents, 6901, 6986-7. See the Report of the Commissioner of Corporations, 1905, p. 5, urging that Congress “so legislate upon the subject as to afford an opportunity to present to the Supreme Court the question whether insurance as now conducted is interstate commerce, and hence subject to Federal regulation.”
See also Sen. Doc. No. 333, 59th Cong., 1st Sess. (1906), for a message of President Roosevelt proposing an insurance code for the District of Columbia and enclosing a report of a convention of State officers called by him to investigate wrongful insurance methods.

 See, e. g., 29 American Bar Association Reports 538 (1906); 24 Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Sciences (1904) 69, 78-83; 26 Id. (1905) 681; Dryden, An Address on the Regulation of Insurance by Congress (1904); 1 Moody’s Magazine (1905-6) 271 et seq.; 38 American Law Review (1904) 181.

 H. R. 7054, 58th Cong., 2d Sess. (1903); H. R. 13791, 58th Cong., 2d Sess. (1904); H. R. 16274, 58th Cong., 3d Sess. (1904); S. 7277, 58th Cong., 3d Sess. (1905); H. R. 15092, 59th Cong., 1st Sess. (1906); H. Res. No. 417, 59th Cong., 1st Sess. (1906). See footnote 9 infra. See also S. 1743,56th Cong., 1st Sess. (1899).

 Compare the debates in the House on the bill, S. 569, to establish a Department of Commerce and Labor. As reported by the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, § 6 of the bill provided for the creation of a bureau of insurance to “exercise such control as may be provided by law” over insurance companies and to “foster, promote, and develop” the insurance business by collecting and compiling statistics. H. R. Rep. No. 2970,57th Cong., 2d Sess., 12,15. After extended debate, in which the provision was objected to for want of power in the federal government to regulate the insurance business and as a threat to the continuance of existing state regulation, 36 Cong. Rec. 868-9, 872-3, 908-11, 919-21, and in which it was insisted by proponents of the bill, as now, that insurance is commerce, 36 Cong. Rec. 876-7, amendments to strike all reference to insurance from the bill were adopted. 36 Cong. Rec. 911, 921. A proposed amendment to prohibit the use of the mails by insurance companies doing business *577in violation of state law was likewise defeated. 36 Cong. Rec. 922-3. The conference committee then inserted the provision, adopted as § 6 of the Act, 32 Stat. 828, authorizing the Bureau of Corporations to compile and publish useful information concerning corporations doing business in the United States and engaged in interstate or foreign commerce, “including corporations engaged in insurance.” Upon assurances that this section “simply authorizes information being secured” and that “there is nothing in this measure that contravenes the votes of the House on that subject,” 36 Cong. Rec. 2008, the conference report was adopted. The insurance provisions were not in the bill as it had originally passed the Senate, and the conference report was adopted by that body without debate. 36 Cong. Rec. 1990, 2035-6.
The Commissioner of Corporations made a study of state legislation, but reported that “in view of the decisions of the Supreme Court I have not felt warranted in trying to assume jurisdiction over insurance companies for the purpose of investigation.” Report of the Commissioner of Corporations, 1905, p. 5; see Report of the Commissioner of Corporations, 1904, pp. 29-33; Report of the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, 1903, p. 26.

 Mr. Webb’s statement was made in answer to an inquiry by Mr. Barton as to whether the proposed section 2 of the Clayton Act would render illegal certain practices if engaged in by wholesalers, in the course of which Mr. Barton referred to an instance of such practices committed by insurance companies. The colloquy continued:
“Mr. Barton. It is not right that they should come within the law?
Mr. Webb. Yes.”
Assuming that Mr. Webb’s answer related to insurance companies, and expressed a desire that such companies should be included within *578the prohibitions of the Sherman and Clayton Acts, but were not, nothing was done to amend those Acts so as to carry out that desire or which would require this Court to reexamine the scope of federal power over insurance.

 For cases arising under the Anti-Trust laws in which this Court has so stated see Hopkins v. United States, 171 U. S. 578, 602; Blumenstock Bros. v. Curtis Publishing Co., 252 U. S. 436, 443; Federal Club v. National League, 259 U. S. 200, 209; Standard Oil Co. v. United States, 283 U. S. 163, 168-9; and see Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U. S. 197, 372, 377 (dissenting opinion). See also United Mine Workers v. Coronado Coal Co., 259 U. S. 344, 410; United Leather Workers v. Herbert & Meisel Co., 265 U. S. 457, 470-71, relying on Ware & Leland v. Mobile County, 209 U. S. 405, a case applying the insurance rule to cotton futures contracts not calling for interstate shipment or delivery.

 One private suit was brought in the District of Columbia to enjoin rate-fixing by an underwriters’ association; the suit was dismissed on the ground that insurance was not commerce. Lown v. Underwriters’ Assn., Sup. Ct. D. C. June 23,1915, reported in 6 Federal AntiTrust Decisions 1048.
Over 252 criminal prosecutions and 272 suits at equity have been instituted by the United States under the Sherman Act, Hamilton, Antitrust in Action, Monograph No. 16, prepared for the Temporary *579National Economic Committee (1940) 76, 78, and over 103 private actions have been brought, Note, 49 Yale L. J. 284, 296 (1939).

 In addition to the bills at note 8, supra, see H. J. Res. 31, 60th Cong., 1st Sess. (1907); S. J. Res. 103, 63d Cong., 2d Sess. (1914); H. J. Res. 194, 63d Cong., 2d Sess. (1914); S. J. Res. 58, 64th Cong., 1st Sess. (1915); S. J. Res. 51, 73d Cong., 1st Sess. (1933), all proposing constitutional amendments.