A SELECTION OF CASES UNDER THE INTERSTATE COMMERCE ACT EDITED BY FELIX FRANKFURTER PROFESSOR OF LAW IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY In the law we only occasionally can reach an absolutely final and quantitative determination, because the worth of the competing social ends which respectively solicit a judgment for the plaintiff or the defendant cannot be reduced to number and accurately fixed. The worth, that is, the intensity of the competing desires, varies with the various ideals of the time, and, if the desires were constant, we could not get beyond a relative decision that one was greater and one was less. But it is of the essence of improvement that we should be as accurate as we can. MR. JUSTICE HOLMES. CAMBRIDGE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1915 PREFATORY NOTE THE original Interstate Commerce Act has now been on the statute books for twenty-eight years. Since then, by successive amendments, the scope of the Act has been greatly extended, both as to the kinds of the utilities affected and as to the extent of the regulation of their business. As a result, the vast and increasing volume of utility enterprise which transcends the confines of a single state, (and even intrastate business which is inseparably connected with or affects interstate commerce), is now governed by a single act and is primarily enforced by a single tribunal. The real scope and meaning of the Act must be sought in a mass of decisions through which there is gradually emerging a body of principles. The intrinsic importance of the subject, the part it plays, and the greater part it is likely to play, in the work of the modern lawyer, calls for the training of men equipped to participate in its enforcement as lawyers, administrators, and judges. In other words, the subject calls for organized, systematic study as one of the most vital branches of the law. Such study is the more imperative now that the Interstate Commerce Act and the experience of its enforcement have, mutatis mutandis, served as the basis for the far-reaching regulation of interstate industrial business embodied in the Federal Trade Commission Act of September 26, 1914, as well as for the regulation of state utilities, through the more recent state utility commission statutes. The present selection of cases has been prepared for use in the Harvard Law School. The generous co-operation of Mr. Max Lowenthal of the New York Bar has made this collection possible at this time. CAMBRIDGE, January, 1915 F. F. |