STATE UTILITIES AND THE SUPREME COURT, 1922-1930

Authors

Thomas Reed Powell, Harvard Law School

Abstract

While enterprises that are "affected with a public interest" or "devoted to a public use" or that come within the class of strict public utilities may be compelled to do a number of things that strictly private enterprise may avoid, the power over utilities is not unlimited. Requirements deemed onerous may be contested as denials of due process of law. The constitutional issue thus raised under the Fourteenth Amendment entitles protestants to start injunction proceedings in federal courts and to seek appeals to the United States Supreme Court from unfavorable decisions of state courts. Often the complaint is not of an absence of power over the subject matter but merely of an unduly burdensome exertion of a power admittedly possessed in general. Thus we have the highest court of the nation as the ultimate authority on complaints premised on facts peculiar to the particular complainant-facts often so peculiar that the decision is little likely to lay down any rule of concern to others.

Recommended Citation

Thomas R. Powell, STATE UTILITIES AND THE SUPREME COURT, 1922-1930, 29 Mich. L. Rev. 1001 (1931).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol29/iss8/4