Page:Henry Osborn Taylor, A Treatise on the Law of Private Corporations (5th ed, 1905).djvu/485

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CHAP. VIII.] CORPORATION AND STATE. [§ 4746. Police power. Commerce clause. §474«. In the exercise of its police power a state must avoid infringing the restrictions before referred to : 1 (1) it must not enter the domain of legislation exclusively reserved to Congress by the constitution, or interfere with Federal regulations constitutionally made ; and (2) it must not take the property of an individual or a corporation without just compensation determined by due process of law. §474&. The opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States in Gibbons v. Ogden, 2 delivered by the great Chief Justice, is still " the accepted canon of con- struction " of the commerce clause in this consti- tution. 3 The main point decided in that case was that the New York statutes giving to Fulton and Livingston the exclusive right to navigate by steam all waters within the territorial jurisdiction of New York state were unconstitu- tional in so far as they excluded from those waters vessels li- censed for the coasting trade under United States laws. 4 Mar- shall expounded the clause broadly, and Gibbons v. Ogden is recognized as authority for the following propositions : The power of Congress to regulate commerce has no limita- tions other than those prescribed in the constitution. 3 The power to regulate is the power " to prescribe the rule by which commerce is to be governed." 6 Commerce among the states cannot stop at the boundary of each state ; so the power of Congress to regulate commerce among the states reaches into their interiors, although it does not extend to the regulation of commerce entirely confined to one state. 7 " The power of Congress, then, comprehends navi- gation within the limits of every state in the Union ; so far as 120 U. S. 64 ; Walla Walla v. Walla Walla Water Co., 172 U. S. 1 ; State v. Murphy, 130 Mo. 10. i-Ante, §§469a, 4696. 2 9 Wheat. 1. 3 Henderson v. Mayor of New York, 92 U. S. 259, 270.

  • Compare Pensacola Tel. Co. v.

Western Un. Tel. Co., 96 U. S. 1, which held that a state could not give a telegraph company a monop- oly within certain of its own coun- 30 ties, when Congress had regulated interstate telegraphing. 5 Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 196; approved in Brown v. Mary- land, 12 Wheat. 419, 446. 6 lb. 9 Wheat. 196. 7 lb. 9 Wheat. 194, approved in Brown ». Maryland, 12 Wheat. 419. See United States v. Forty-three Gallons of Whiskey, 93 U. S. 188; Guy v. Baltimore, 100 U. S. 434. 465