Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/70

Harvard Law Review. Published monthly, during the Academic Year, by Harvard Law Students. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE, $2.50 PER ANNUM 36 CENTS PER NUMBER. Editorial Board. John G. Palfrey, Editor-in-Chief. Wirt Howe, Treasurer. Eugene H. Angert, William W. Moss, George B. Hatch, John S. Murdock, Stevens Heckscher, Charles O. Parish, Augustine L. Humes, Sanford Robinson, Albert S. Hutchinson, Dean Sage, Jr., Arthur W. Machen, Jr., Bruce Wyman. The Nebraska Maximum Freight Rates. — Of the questions that complicate the modern economic system none is more difficult than that of the regulation of rates charged by quasi-public corporations, and, in particular, by railroads. It would seem to have been of primary import- ance that the extent of the power of the State legislature under the fed- eral Constitution to regulate the rates charged by railroads within its limits should be settled by the United States Supreme Court ; but this has not been finally accomplished until the recent case of Ames v. Union Pacific R. R. Co., reported in the Chicago Legal News, March 19, 1898. A Nebraska statute prescribed a schedule of maximum rates, which rates, if adopted by the railroad company, would have forced the railroad to operate at a loss, so far as profits within the State were concerned. This statute the court held unconstitutional, on the ground that it worked a deprivation of property without due process of law. The decision of the court, by Mr. Justice Harlan, although it has been severely criticised, seems to be sound. It is consistent with a line of dicta in analogous cases, which have themselves been distinguished upon dubious grounds, Reagan v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Co., 154 U. S. Rep. 362 ; and the conclusion also follows necessarily from the decision in the case of Covington 6- Lexington Turnpike Road Co. v. Sandford, 164 U. S. 578. In the latter case a statute was held invalid which prescribed such rates for the tolls to> be charged by turnpikes that the plaintiff, a turnpike company, would have been deprived of all profits. From turn- pikes to railroads the step is short. The principles which apply are the same ; and it is noteworthy that the turnpike case was decided largely on the authority of the dicta in the previous railroad cases. The argu- ment of those who disagree with the position taken by the Court has been that any State statute properly enacted is " due process of law " within the meaning of the Constitution, and that, if it is necessary that a regulation should be reasonable in order to fall within the limits of the police power of the State, the question is nevertheless a legislative