Substantive due process: regulating the railroads The Water Closet Cases: Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway Co. v. State – Texas, 1907 (100 S.W. 766); Houston & Texas Central Railway Co. v. State – Texas, 1907 (103 S.W.449); Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Co. v. Railroad Commission – California, 1916 (160 P. 828)
“The supervision of service rendered by a railroad co is a proper matter for public regulation and control. The question whether a railroad co shall extend its lines to points not theretofore reached by it, whether, in other words, it shall engage in a new and additional enterprise, is one of policy to be determined by its directors. To compel a railroad co to apply its prop to the construction and operation of a line of railroad which it does not desire to construct or operate is to take its property.” – Justice _, in Santa Fe
Substantive due process: Progressivism, Texas-Style Solon v. State – Texas, 1908 (114 S.W. 349); Watts v. State – Texas, 1911 (135 S.W. 585)
| “It would not have been a violent
assumption of fact to conclude that the Missouri, Kansas & Tex Railway Co, with all of its facilities for transportation … could within the seven days’ time have constructed and erected water-closets. If we would exercise the privilege, as the Supreme Court has done, of entering into the domain of assumption, we would be within the facts in making the statement that that road, and others within this state ... could easily, without two or three days, build and construct and complete one of these closets.” - Texas Appeals Judge _, in Houston & Texas Central
“To give this section of the Terrell election law the construction that that law seeks would prevent, or tend to prevent, the poorer citizenship of the country from voting, or qualifying themselves to vote, by reason of their poverty. The construction of a law that would lead to such results certainly was never intended by the framers of the Constitution.” – Justice _ Davidson, in Solon “If the citizenship of Texas believed that individuals who did not take enough interest in the welfare of their state to pay the small amount levied as a poll tax should be debarred from voting, and in their organic law so provide, is it not the duty of the Legis to see that that provision is respected, and not sit idly by and see it defeated by subterfuges and evasions?” - Justice _, in Watts |
EMPIRE OF LAWS - The Legal History of the 50 American States > 7. SOUTHWEST LEGAL HISTORY > 7.3 Southwest Legal History: Grappling with Growth (1900-1930) > 7.3.1 Southwest (1900-1930): Mixed Progress for Civil Rights > 7.3.2 Southwest (1900-1930): Courts and Workplace Laws >