The dawn of railroad regulation: the Granger Cases Minneapolis Eastern Railway Co. v. Warehouse Commission – Minnesota, 1872 (11 Minn. 515); Chicago & Alton Railroad Co. v. People ex rel. Koerner (McLean County Case) – Illinois, 1873 (67 Ill. 11); Munn v. People – Illinois, 1873 (69 Ill. 80); Attorney General v. Chicago & Northwestern Railroad Co. (Potter Law Case) – Wisconsin, 1874 (35 Wis. 425)
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Grain elevator, Illinois (courtesy Wikimedia Commons) “[Corporations] must be permitted to invoke the spirit of justice which prompted the, so far as may be necessary to protect their prop and franchises against the operation of a law that substantially condemns without a trial.” -Justice Charles Lawrence, in the McLean County case “No person can claim that, in the exercise of the proper functions of government, his property shall not be diminished in value … All regulations of trade with a view to the public interests, may more or less impair the value of prop, but they do not come within the constitutional inhibition unless they virtually take away and destroy those rights in which prop consists. This destruction must be, for all substantial purposes, total.” -Justice Sidney Breese, in Munn “It would have been a mockery of justice to have left corporations, counting their capital by millions … subject only to the common law liabilities and remedies which were adequate protection against turnpike and bridge and ferry companies …[The Potter Law] was denounced as an act of communism … [but t]hese wild terms are are as applicable to a statute limiting the rates of toll on railroads, as the term murder is to the surgeon’s wholesome use of the knife, to save life, not to take it.” -Chief Justice Edward Ryan, in the Potter Law Case |
EMPIRE OF LAWS - The Legal History of the 50 American States > 5. MIDWEST LEGAL HISTORY > 5.3. The Midwest,1865-1900: The Flowering of Agrarian Capitalism > 5.3.1. The Midwest, 1865-1900: Last Stand for States Rights > 5.3.2. The Midwest, 1865-1900: The Beginnings of Modern Civil Rights > 5.3.3. The Midwest, 1865-1900: The Women's Rights Revolution >