FEDERAL CONTROL OF INSURANCE CORPORATIONS. Co. a contract that by its terms should be subject to the laws of New York was a com mercial right protected by the commerce clause of the Federal constitution from in terference by a Missouri statute. But this contention likewise met with no favor, the court, after quoting with approval the language of Mr. Justice White in Hooper v. California, as set forth above, declared that life insurance was no more to be regarded as interstate commerce than fire and marine insurance. Despite the fact that these decisions seem to have unequivocally committed the Su preme Court to the doctrine that insurance is not in any of its forms or incidents inter state commerce, yet there are many lawyers who contend that the business of the great national insurance companies is in its na ture interstate commerce after all; that the confusion, inconvenience, and oppression resulting to those interested in interstate insurance from state control and regulation exemplify in a striking manner the very evils that the framers of the constitution intended to prevent by the insertion of the commerce clause. The insurance people, therefore, being goaded to desperation by the harassing and vexatious conduct of the state insurance departments, have deter mined to secure the passage of an act of Congress for the regulation of the insurance business, and then, when the act is brought to the bar of the Supreme Court, to force that tribunal to repudiate the long line of cases declaring insurance not to be inter state commerce, and to hold the law con stitutional. That they will succeed in this aim seems scarcely possible. That the Supreme Court
has in the past known several radical changes of heart and understanding is quite true. It is also true that at least one important rule of insurance law laid down in earlier cases has been repudiated by a recent de cision.1 But a change of opinion that would involve the absolute repudiation of a doc trine that has stood unshaken, though often assailed, during thirty-five years, and that would involve such far-reaching conse quences as affecting the delicately adjusted relations between the Federal government and the states, scarcely seems possible. From an examination of the cases that have arisen under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890, beginning with the Sugar Trust case 2 and ending with the recent Northern Securities case;' there can be observed a growing tendency on the part of the court to broaden the significance of the term "interstate commerce" so as to include within it all business relations that are es sentially interstate in character, even though the transportation between the states of commodities or persons is not immediately involved.4 This tendency, however, being born of the court's desire to make the Federal act against trusts and monopolies effective so far as possible, is not strong enough to justify any hope that it will ever hold insurance to be commerce. WASHINGTON, D. C., JAN. 1905. 1 Northern Assurance Co. v. Grand View Bldg. Ass'n, 183 U. S. 308. Compare Union Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Wilkinson, 13 Wall. 322. 1 United States v. E. C. Knight Co., 156 U. S. i. 3 193 U. S. 197. 4 See especially Addyston Pipe & Steel Co. v. United States, 175 U. S. 211.
