Certain state As flict with the power of Congress over commerce.73 laws, affecting commerce, have, however, been sustained; and in all such cases the regulation thus sustained has been in the nature of the exercise of a police power. A number of cases where a state has thus been sustained in the passage of such a law have been given in the preceding section; many other cases on the same subject have also been similarly decided." stated by Mr. Justice Harlan in Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company v. Mathews,75 laws passed in the exercise of the police power will be upheld where "enacted in good faith, and which have appropriate and direct connection with the protection of life, health and property, which each state owes to its citizens." The real object of the exercise of the police power is to secure the general welfare of the community.76 It is to be distinguished from the right of eminent domain" or the power of taxation. The police power of a state may ordinarily be delegated to the municipalities of the State, but it cannot be surrendered by the State Legislature.78 § 94. The police power continued. Special illustrations of the exercise of said power.-As stated in the previous section, the Supreme Court of the United States has declared that the defining of the term "police power" was an impossibility and that all that it could do was to pass on each question under this general subject on its own merits as it arose. In the previous section the general questions relative to the police power have been discussed, it remains to consider the various State laws which the Supreme Court has declared to be valid exercises of this power. The Slaughter House79 Decision contains what is probably the most famous discussion of the subject of police power ever rendered by the United States Supreme Court, and several extracts therefrom are here given: "It is, however, the slaughter house privilege which is mainly relied on to justify the charges of gross injustice to the public and invasion of private right. "It is not, and cannot be successfully controverted, that it is both the right and the duty of the legislative body, the supreme power of the State or municipality, to prosecute and determine the locality where the business of slaughtering for a great city may be conducted. To do this effectively it is indispensable that all persons who slaughter animals for food shall do so in those places and nowhere else. * * "The power here exercised by the Legislature of Louisiana is in its essential nature one which has been, up to the present period in the constitutional history of this country, always conceded to belong to the State; however, it may now be questioned in some of its details." "Unwholesome trades, slaughter houses, operations offensive to the senses, the deposit of powder, the application of steam power to propel cars, the building with combustible materials and the burial of the dead may all," says Chancellor Kent, 3 Com. 340, "be interdicted by law in the midst of dense masses of population on the general and rational principle that every person ought so to use his property as not to injure his neighbors, and that private interests must be made subservient to the general interests of the community." This is called the police power, and it is disclosed by Chief Justice Shaw that it is much easier to perceive and realize the existence and sources of it than to mark its boundaries or prescribe the limits to its exercise. Com. 6 Alger, 7 Cush. 84. * * * "It extends," says another eminent judge, "to the protection of the lives, limbs, health, comfort and quiet of all persons, and the protection of all property within the State, and persons and property are subjected to all kinds of restraints and burdens in order to secure the general comfort, health and prosperity of the State. Of the perfect right of the Legislature to do this no question ever was or, upon acknowledged principles, ever can be made so far as natural persons are concerned." This slaughter house decision has been much criticised, and some later decisions of the Supreme Court do not seem to go to the extreme position taken in his case.so The monopoly granted by the State of Louisiana, and upheld by the Slaughter House decision, is contrary to the principles both of the common law and of American institutions. Of directly opposite tendency to this law of Louisiana are the many recent State laws which have been formed for the purpose of prohibiting or controlling trusts or combinations. Such laws are valid exercise of the police power of the States.81 Congress may also pass laws of this character where the trusts or agreement affect commerce between the States.82 The general right of the States to properly regulate all business that may be conducted so as to work an injury to the public or to become a nuisance is undisputed. Laws with this purpose, however, are subject to the test of reasonableness, to be applied by the judicial tribunals. The Legislature cannot destroy or drive out particular trades or occupations under the mere suggestion that they are harmful.83 The most important case on this point is that of Yick Wo v. Hopkins, where a law was held unreasonable on account of racial discrimination. "Licenses when used for regulation are not in any sense contracts. A license is a mere permit, which may be revoked at any time or to which new conditions may be attached. Employments affecting the public health and safety are almost uniformly subjected to licenses; such employment as those of bakers, dealers in rags, meats and provisions, milk, liquors, explosives, patent medicines and the calling of hawkers, itinerant medical practitioners, market men, plumbers, scavengers, street musicians and so forth, and the cases are very numerous. Skilled trades are very commonly regulated and the regulations are sustained by the judges. For example, it is used for the State to provide 80 See Gulf Ry. Co. v. Ellis, 165 U. S., 150; Holden v. Hardy, 169 U. S., 366; and Maxwell v. Daw, 176 U. S., 581. 81 Gibbs v. Baltimore Gas Co., 130 U. S., 396. 82 Addyston Pipe and Steel Co. v. United States, 175 U. S., 211. $3 Russell's "The Police Power of the State," p. 92. Stockton Laundry Case, 26 Fed. Rep., 611. 84 118 U. S., 356. by law that no person shall be employed as an engineer by railroads who cannot read the printed time table or handwritings, and to require that public transportation companies shall refuse employment to all persons who use liquor. So also persons who cannot distinguish colors or are afflicted with what is called color blindness are forbidden to be employed."85 An important subject of the exercise of the police power is the protection of the public health and safety;86 in fact, the accomplishment of such purposes is generally the justification for the regulation of business or occupations. The manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors may be prohibited, even although buildings have been erected and equipped for such purposes prior to the enactment of the statute and at a time when the business was lawful. When, however, any property is actually taken for the public use compensation must be made. 87 The police power has even been held to justify a State in interfering with the liberty of contracting, although in general public policy requires the utmost liberty of contracting. Even contracts of exemption from liabilities for negligence,ss and from the liability for losses on connecting lines of transportation,89 have been upheld. An almost unlimited number of illustrations of other methods of exercising this police power could be given. $95. Powers prohibited absolutely to the States.-The tenth section of the first article of the Constitution contains an enumeration of those powers which the Constitution denies to the States. These denied powers fall into two sharply defined classes, those denied absolutely and under all circumstances to the States, and those which they are prohibited from exercising without the consent of Congress. The first clause of this section contains the provision as to the first of these classes, and is as follows: "No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance or confedera tion, grant letters of marque and reprisal, coin money, emit bills of credit, make anything but gold and silver coin in tender in payment of debts, pass any bill of attainder, or ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility." The prohibition against the States entering into any treaty, alliance or confederation was a necessary one in view of the relations which the Constitution established between the central government and the government of the States. The first power which a subordinate government is obliged to surrender to its superior government is the control or regulation of foreign affairs, and it is by this clause that this power is surrendered by the States to the United States. The only cases in which the Supreme Court has been called upon to interpret this provision was in cases arising out of the Civil War. These cases will be found treated of in Chapter XIII. Under the Articles of Confederation the different States had been allowed to issue letters of marque and reprisal in times of war against the enemies of the United States, or even in times of peace if their waters were infected with pirates. This section of the Constitution prohibits this right to them altogether. The power to coin money was another power previously exercised by the States, now surrendered entirely to the general Government. The power of coining money and of regulating its value was delegated to Congress by the Constitution for the very purpose, as assigned by the framers of that instrument, of creating and preserving the uniformity and purity of such a standard of value; and on account of the impossibility, which was foreseen, of otherwise preventing the inequalities and the confusion. necessarily incident to different views of policy, which in different communities would be brought to bear on this subject." To coin money is to mold or form a metallic substance into the form of coins.92 This section denies to the States, as the previous section denies. Articles of Confederation, Ar ticle 6. Howard, 560. Griswold v. Hepburn, 2 Duvall, 29. |