Grand Trunk Railway Co. v. Michigan Railroad Commission

Citations

• 231 U.S. 457
• 34 S. Ct. 152
• 58 L. Ed. 310
• 1913 U.S. LEXIS 2541

Syllabus

<p>A State is competent to create a commission and give it power of regulating railroads and investigating conditions upon which regulation may be directed; and the judiciary will only interfere with such a commission when it appears that it has clearly transcended its powers.</p> <p>Courts are reluctant to interfere with the laws of a State or with the tribunals constituted to enforce them; doubts will not be resolved against the law.</p> <p>It cannot as yet be asserted that Congress has, to the exclusion of the States, taken over the whole subject of carriers’ terminals, switchings and sidings; and quiere where the accommodation between intrastate and interstate commerce shall be made.</p> <p>The fact that a movement of freight begins and ends within the limits of a city does not taire from it its character of an actual transportation between two termini; and so held in regard to transportation between junction points in Detroit, Michigan.</p> <p>While a city may be in some senses a terminal unit, the State Railroad Commission may regulate traffic between different points therein as transportation, and to do so does not amount to an appropriation of the terminals of one road for the use and benefit of other 'roads.</p> <p>Transportation is the business of railroads and when, and to what extent, that business may be regulated so depends upon circumstances that no inflexible rule can be laid down. Wisconsin &c. R. R. Co. v. Jacobson, 179 U. S. 287.</p> <p>If the provisions for penalties in-a statute creating a railroad commission and providing for the enforcement of the orders made by it are separable, as in this case, their constitutionality can be determined when their enforcement is attempted, and the operation of the whole act will not be suspended before that event. Louis. & Nash. R. R. Co. v. Garrett, ante, p. 298.</p> <p>Railroad companies are incorporated for purposes of transportation.; and the fact that a company was not specifically incorporated to carry