Initial Implementation and Legal Challenges
The ICC had a troubled start because the Act failed to give it adequate enforcement powers.
- "The Commission is, or can be made, of great use to the railroads. It satisfies the popular clamor for a government supervision of the railroads, while at the same time that supervision is almost entirely nominal." - William H. H. Miller, US Attorney General, circa 1889.
Following passage of the Act, the ICC proceeded to set maximum shipping rates for railroads. However, several railroads challenged the agency's rate-making authority in 1897, with the Supreme Court ruling that the ICC had no power to fix rates; this ultimately nullified the clause stating that the short haul should cost no more than the long haul.
Read more about this topic: Interstate Commerce Commission
Famous quotes containing the words initial, legal and/or challenges:
“No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“We should stop looking to law to provide the final answer.... Law cannot save us from ourselves.... We have to go out and try to accomplish our goals and resolve disagreements by doing what we think is right. That energy and resourcefulness, not millions of legal cubicles, is what was great about America. Let judgment and personal conviction be important again.”
—Philip K. Howard, U.S. lawyer. The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America, pp. 186-87, Random House (1994)
“A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)