Interstate Commerce Commission v. Alabama Midland Ry Co’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 federal appellate · 4 district · 25 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 68 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The last sentence in this extract is objected to by the commission’s counsel, as declaring that the determination of the extent to which discrimination is justified by circumstances and conditions should be left to the carriers. If so read, we should not be ready to adopt or approve such a position. But we understand the statement, read in the connection in which it occurs, to mean only that, when once a substantial dissimilarity of circumstances and conditions has been made to appear, the carriers are, from the nature of the question, better fitted to adjust their rates to suit such dissimilarity of circumstances and conditions than courts or commissions; and when we consider the difficulty — the practical impossibility — of a court or a commission taking into view the various and continually changing facts that bear upon.the question, and intelligently regulating rates and charges accordingly, the observation objected to is manifestly just. But it does not mean that the action of the carriers in fixing and adjusting rates in such instances is not subject to revision by the commission and the courts, when it is charged that such action has resulted in rates unjust or unreasonable, or in unjust discrimination and preferences.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Interstate Commerce Commission v. Western & A. R.

2. ““Within the limits of the exercise of intelligent good faith in the conduct of their business, and subject to the two leading prohibitions that their charges shall not be unreasonable or unjust, and that they shall not unjustly discriminate so as to give undue preference or disadvantage to persons or traffic similarly circumstanced, the act to regulate commerce leaves common carriers as they were at the common law, free to make special rates looking to the increase of their business, to classify their traffic, to adjust and apportion their rates so as to meet the necessities of commerce and of their own situation and relation to it, and, generally, to manage their important interests upon the same principles which are regarded as sound and adopted in other trades and pursuits. The carriers are better qualified to adjust such matters than any court or board of public administration; and, within the limitations suggested, it is safe and wise to leave to their traffic managers the adjusting of dissimilar circumstances and conditions to their business.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Interstate Commerce Commission v. Western & A. R.

3. ““That competition is one of the most obvious and effective circumstances that make the conditions under which a long and short haul is performed substantially dissimilar, and as such must have been in the contemplation of congress in the passage of the act to regulate commerce, has been held by many of the circuit courts.” 168 U. S. 164 , 18 Sup. Ct. 50 , 42 L. Ed. 424 .”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Interstate Commerce Commission v. Southern Ry. Co.