Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/362

Harvard Law Review. Published monthly, during the Academic Year, by Harvard Law Students. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE, $2.50 PER ANNUM 35 CENTS PER NUMBER. Editorial Board. John G. Palfrey, Editor-in-Chief. Wirt Howe, Treasurer. William W. Moss, EuGKNE H. Angert, Charles O. Parish, Joseph P. Cotton, Jr., Sanford Robinson, Edward W. Fox, Dean Sage, Jr., Roy C. Gasser, Graham Sumner, George B. Hatch, Joseph Warren, Augustine L. Humes, Beekman Winthrop, Arthur W. Machen, Jr., Bruce Wyman. New York and the Constitutionality of the Anti-Scalper Acr. — A statute which in substantially the same form has remained for forty years on the statute book of New York, and which during that time has received the unqualified support of the courts, has now been held unconstitutional by the Court of Appeals, People v. Warden of City Prison, New York Law Journal, Nov. 28 and 29, 1898. The statute forbade the sale of passage tickets on any railroad or vessel except by the authorized agents of transportation companies. The applicant was arrested for selling a ticket from New York to Norfolk, Va., without authority from any transportation company. He applied for a writ of habeas corpus, claiming the statute was unconstitutional, in that by preventing his engaging in a lawful business — that of ticket broker — it deprived him of his liberty without due process of law. The Supreme Court held unanimously that the law was constitutional ; but the Court of Appeals has now reversed this decision by the close vote of four judges to three. This ruling upsets what had been thought the settled policy of the state. It is also in conflict with the decisions in the other states which have similar statutes. State v. Corbett, 57 Minn., 345. A recent case in Illinois, People ex rel. Geis et al. v. Pease, reported in Chicago Legal, News, Nov. 12, might give it some support, but that decision is only in a circuit court and seems at odds with a decision of the Supreme Court of that state. Bur dick v. People, 149 111. 600. When the court holds that the word ** liberty " as used in the four- teenth amendment embraces the right to exercise a trade, they state the established New York rule. But this use of the word seems an extension beyond its legitimate meaning, and in spite of its approval in the case of Allgeyer v. Louisiana, 165 U. S. 578 — [where the opinion was given by a former New York judge] — the point seems still open to contest in those states which have not committed themselves. Aside from that