THE SUPREME COURT'S ADJUDICATION OF CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES IN 1921-1922, II

Authors

Thomas Reed Powell, Harvard Law School

Abstract

Questions of discrimination in rates or services arising under the Interstate Commerce Act or some of its amendments came before the court in a number of cases without raising any direct constitutional issues. Such an issue, however, was urged against a refusal of the Interstate Commerce Commission to allow a tap line owned by a Lumber company more than $3 per car as its share of the joint rate for traffic over it and the main line, but in Louisiana & P. B. Ry. Co. v. United States the claim that this restriction was so arbitrary as to deny the tap line due process of law was answered by pointing out that the tap line's contention was predicated on the length of a back haul to certain scales which was wholly unnecessary since the weighing might be done by the trunk line, and that any allowance for such unnecessary trips would enable the tap lines to secure rebates for their owners, the lumber companies, as compared with other lumber concerns shipping over tap lines not owned by them. The Commodities Clause of the Hepburn Act contains an exception which permits carriers and lumber companies to be in substance identical. If such a carrier gets more than its fair share of a joint rate, the benefit enures to the lumber company, which thereby in effect gets for its transportation a rate lower than that paid by other lumber companies which, being shippers only and not shippers and carriers combined, get back no part of the bread which they cast upon the waters

Recommended Citation

Thomas R. Powell, THE SUPREME COURT'S ADJUDICATION OF CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES IN 1921-1922, II, 21 Mich. L. Rev. 174 (1922).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol21/iss2/4