an opportunity to test the order so clear and definite that plaintiff in error was obliged to proceed thereunder or suffer loss of rights guaranteed by the Federal Constitution. * * * Without doubt the duties of the Courts upon appeals under the Act are judicial in character—not legislative. * * * This is not disputed; but their jurisdiction * * * stopped short of what must be plainly intrusted to some Court, in order that there may be due process of law."
In commodity cases, where prices, of necessity, vary from minute to minute, the decision of one day must be totally inadequate for the next day's prices; and, as there is nothing in the Act by which anyone can obtain relief until after he has acted, at his peril, it is impossible to see how one can have proper constitutional protection under its provisions. Indeed, upon general principles of jurisprudence, has it not always been the law that men, forced to reach conclusions, must be kept free from even the possibility of civil, much less criminal liability, for error in the conclusions that they may reach?
And, if this be so, is it not inconceivable that the Legislature could have intended, or that it would constitute due process of law, even did it so intend, to enact that men were to be criminally punished, under circumstances and for acts of which, the law has always declared, they could not properly judge or expect to attain correct results; and in a class of cases, where the matters involved were of the most speculative and difficult character? Indeed, even of a much more difficult (if not an impossible) nature than those utility cases of which the Court treated. "In determining
The Court held that the section in question did not make adequate provision for testing judicially an order of the Commission alleged to be confiscatory.
