The Green Bag
366
of discovering some other means of mmsuring rates which would yield the same results as would be attained by a comparison of costs,
were that method practicable.
In some cases,
as we have seen, distance may be used as a means
of measuring the reasonableness of rates. Con sidered as the sole element in the determination of rates distance would of course yield unsatis factory results;
but it is nevertheless, as the
Commission says, ‘in the absence of other influences a controlling element.‘ Its value as a measuring instrument lies not in the fact that it is independent of costs but that in the absence of other influences it reflects costs. "The same thing may be said of the effort of the Commission to preserve for a place its natural advantages of location. A place can have no advantage of location which a carrier is bound to respect other than that which is due to its
easily have been grouped under the heading of cost of service. . . . In many cases we have observed that the values of commodities were allowed to affect rates because the Commission felt under obli ation to maintain com tition between estab ishments located at iflerent points and engaged in turning out products in different stages of manufacture. . . . "If the conclusion be accepted, which these articles seem to support, that the tendency of the Interstate Commerce Commission's de cisions is, on the whole, towards a cost of service
theory of rate makin, there still remains the task of so stating a t eory of rates as to bring in the various considerations which we have seen the Commission has emphasized as factors in rate making, and show how they can be re
it possible to reach the same goal by other methods. It is a fundamental principle of economics that free and untrammeled competi
lated to the fundamental principle. It is per haps well to say that nowhere has the Commission undertaken to state such a comprehensive theory of rate making." The writer proceeds to formulate eight rules, the practical applicability of which "is proved by t e fact that the application of every one of them can be shown by illustrations taken from the Commission's decisions." Real Property. “Release and Discharge of Powers." By Prof. John Chipman Gray.
tion, operating over a long geriod of time, tends
24 Harvard Law Review 511 (May).
ability to place its products on the market at
less cost than can its competitors. Rates based on the principle of recognizing natural advan tages of location are therefore true to the cost of service principle. “Even in the absence of these indirect methods of determining costs, the Commission has found
to reduce prices to a cost asis. . . . In spite of all the inconsistencies and contradictions involved in the Commission's discussion of competition,— many of which, as we have observed, are due to an efl'ort to preserve the
s irit of the law, —— we see running throughout the Commission's decisions a tendency to fix
rates at the point where a normal and healthy struggle between competing interests has tended to leave them. Competitive rates are therefore true to a cost of service princi le. . . . "In accepting different met ods of measuring the reasonableness of railway rates the Inter state Commerce Commission has been confronted with the same difficulty that we find when we come to measure the size or magnitude of physi cal objects, and it has solved the problem in the same way. In some cases we use dry measure, in others liquid measure, in others cubic measure,
and in still others measure by weight. . . . In the same way the Commission in its efl'orts to base rates u n cost of service has found it practically a vantageous at times to use other methods of measurement—distance, advan tage of location, competition, fair return on investment; all of which in the sense in which
they are employed by the Commission are merely expressive of cost relations. . . . "Two other considerations em hasized by the Commission, value of commodity and sec tional or class interests, still remain to be dealt with. With reference to the last-named con sideration it is hard to see how it can be made to fit in with any defensible theory of railway rates. Possibly the decisions rendered in most of the cases coming under this head are entitled to a degree of justification on the ground that the Commission was endeavorin to preserve competition among producers. any of the cases in which value of commodity was made the basis of the Commission's decision might
Considering the subject under the following headings: I, Powers Appendant; 11, Powers Simply Collateral; III, Reversed Powers in Cross; IV, Powers in Cross; and each of these heads is this subdivided: (a) gen
eral powers exercisable by either deed (b) special powers exercisable by either will; (c) general powers exercisable only; (d) special powers exercisable
or will; deed or by will by will
only.
See Torrens System. Religious Freedom. "Religious Liberty and Bible Reading in Illinois Public Schools, I." By Prof. Henry Schofield, Northwestern University. 6 Illinois Law Review 17 (May). Scots Law. See Legal History. Self-Incrlmlnation. "Corporate Privilege Against Self-lncrimination." By Joseph M. Proskauer. 11 Columbia Law Review 445 (May). "Today in the Southern District of New York,
at all events, it is temporarily, at least, the law that a corporation has no privilege against self-incrimination. The distinction between a corporation and an individual in this respect is not based on any legal logic. If it is desirable to curtail the privilege generally, appropriate constitutional amendment to that end is the pro r course. In its final analysis the fining of t e corporation is deprivation of the property of its stockholders, and the Fifth Amendment
looks by its terms to the protection, not only of life but of liberty and property. And so lon as those guarantees stand, the property 0 individuals cannot reasonably be appropriated because it exists in corporate form, by a process which, if attempted to be applied to individuals,
