Texas & Pacific Railway Co. v. Interstate Commerce Commission

Citations

• 162 U.S. 197
• 16 S. Ct. 666
• 40 L. Ed. 940
• 1896 U.S. LEXIS 2200

Syllabus

<p>. The Interstate Commerce Commission is a body corporate, with legal capacity to be a party plaintiff or defendant in the Federal courts.</p> <p>The Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York had jurisdiction of the acts complained of in this suit.</p> <p>The Southern Pacific Company, although a proper, was not a necessary party to this suit.</p> <p>In enacting the interstate commerce acts Congress had in view, and intended to make provision for commerce between States and Territories, commerce going to and coming from foreign countries, and the whole field of commerce except that wholly within a State; and it conferred upon the Commission the power of determining whether, in given cases, the services rendered were like and contemporaneous, whether the respective traffic was of a like kind, and whether the transportation was under substantially similar circumstances and conditions.</p> <p>If the Commission has power, of its own motion, to promulgate general decrees or orders, which thereby become rules of action to common carriers, such exertion of power must be confined to the obvious purposes and directions of the statute, since Congress has not granted it legislative powers.</p> <p>The action of the defendant company in procuring from abroad, by steamship connections, through traffic for San Francisco which, except for the modified through rates, would not have reached the port of New Orleans, and in taking its pro rata share of. such rates, was not of itself an act of “ unjust discrimination” within the meaning of the interstate commerce act.</p> <p>In construing the terms of a-statute, especially when the legislation is experimental, courts must take notice of the history of the legislation, and, out of different possible constructions, must select the one that best comports with the genius of our institutions.</p> <p>In enacting the statutes establishing the Interstate Commerce Commission, the purpose of Congress was to facilitate and promote comme