EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT action as inhere in the ' prohibitions ' of the Constitution. Third, the United States has full power to hold annexed territory, until its inhabitants are qualified to become citizens thereof, and Congress may determine how long that period shall continue." CONSTITUTIONAL LAW (The Commerce Clause). Under the title " The Commerce Clause of the Federal Constitution and Two Recent Cases Dealing with It," S. S. Gregory has a suggestive discussion in the April Mich igan Law Review (V. v, p. 419) of the cases of Howard v. Illinois Central Railroad Co. and Brooks v. Southern Pacific Co., in which Judges McCall and Evans respectively decided that the recent act of Congress regulating the liability for injury to employees of common carriers engaged in interstate commerce was unconstitutional. The question is now before the Supreme Court. Mr. Gregory thinks the cases have been wrongly decided in the lower court, that such regulation is fairly within the scope of the commerce clause. He says that the power to regulate interstate commerce is as broad as the power to regulate foreign com merce and that Congress has without question imposed such liability on ocean carriers en gaged in foreign commerce. "It is no solution of this question to say, as does Judge McCall in his opinion, not merely once but repeatedly, that the liability of a common carrier to its employees for injuries is not interstate commerce. Neither are rail ways, bridges, or ships commerce, interstate or otherwise; yet their construction, location, and use may be regulated and controlled by Congress when employed in connection with interstate commerce. In view of the plenary and sovereign nature of the power of Congress in this regard, it is hardly too much to say that every person derives his right to engage in interstate commerce under national author ity; that he may exercise this right only upon the conditions which Congress sees fit to pre scribe in respect thereof; that' in this respect this right is as wholly derived from national authority as are the charter rights of a corpo ration from the sovereign from which they emanate; with foreign and interstate commerce the States have absolutely nothing to do. In that restricted field where their legislative enactments have been permitted to stand,
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although somewhat related to interstate com merce, this has been not because of any in herent vitality in such legislation considered by itself, but because from the silence or failure of Congress to occupy this field the courts have raised the presumption that it was the national legislative will that the State should be, sub modo, permitted to act in it. It would appear, therefore, to be at least a moderate statement that, in respect of interstate com merce and all its incidents, the Congress has the same, power of police, which is possessed by legislatures of the several States in respect of matters within the sovereignty of each State." And the statute, Mr. Gregory thinks, is clearly within the police power. The objection that the act may in a measure affect commerce carried on entirely within a state, does not seem to him of any controlling significance in the light of the fact that it has been found no objection at all to the exercise of the power in respect of maritime transpor tation and having regard to several decisions referred to. "It remains to notice briefly the suggestion made by Judge Evans that as the act in ques tion would be in terms applicable in the case of injury to employees employed in the shops of a railway company and its general office, whose duties were in no way related to inter state commerce or to transportation of articles of interstate commerce, therefore the statute is invalid. It must be said that this is the most plausible objection that has been urged against its validity and possibly it ought to be regarded as conclusive against it; yet I am not altogether persuaded on this point. If it be true, as I have already suggested, that the right to engage in interstate commerce at all is derived wholly from the Nation, then it is not at all impossible that Congress has power to prescribe the terms and conditions upon which anyone shall engage either in interstate commerce or in the transportation of articles of interstate commerce. Possibly the suggestion made by Mr. Garfield, that every corporation engaged in such commerce be required to take out a license from the federal government, will be found to rest, for its practicability and validity, upon this idea. It is certainly a question of profound and far-reaching impor
