"Congress has undoubted power to redefine the distribution of power over interstate commerce. It may either permit the states to regulate the commerce in a manner which would otherwise not be permissible,[791] or exclude state regulation even of matters of peculiarly local concern which nevertheless affect interstate commerce.[792]
"But in general Congress has left it to the courts to formulate the rules thus interpreting the commerce clause in its application, doubtless because it has appreciated the destructive consequences to the commerce of the nation if their protection were withdrawn,[793] and has been aware that in their application state laws will not be invalidated without the support of relevant factual material which will 'afford a sure basis' for an informed judgment.[794] Meanwhile, Congress has accommodated its legislation, as have the states, to these rules as an established feature of our constitutional system. There has thus been left to the states wide scope for the regulation of matters of local state concern, even though it in some measure affects the commerce, provided it does not materially restrict the free flow of commerce across state lines, or interfere with it in matters with respect to which uniformity of regulation is of predominant national concern."
State Regulation of Agencies of Interstate Commerce
RAILWAY RATE REGULATION
In one of the Granger Cases decided in 1877 the Court upheld the power of the legislature of Wisconsin in the absence of legislation by Congress, to prescribe by law the maximum charges to be made by a railway company for fare and freight upon the transportation of persons and property within the State, or taken up outside the State and brought within it, or taken up inside and carried without it.[795] Ten years later, in Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway Co. v. Illinois[796] this decision was reversed as to persons and property taken up within the State and transported out of it and as to persons and property brought into the State from outside. As to these, the Court held that the regulation of rates and charges must be uniform and that, therefore, the States had no power to deal with the subject even when Congress had not acted. The following year Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act[797] to fill the gap created by the Wabash decision. Today, the States still exercise the power to regulate railway rates for the carriage of persons and property taken up and put down within their borders, but do so subject to the rule, which is enforced by the Interstate Commerce Commission, that such rates may not discriminate against interstate commerce.[798]
In many other respects the power still remains with the States to require by statute or administrative order a fair and adequate service for their inhabitants from railway companies, including interstate carriers operating within their borders, so long as the burdens thus imposed upon interstate commerce are, in the judgment of the Court, "reasonable." In an instructive brace of cases the Court was asked to say whether a carrier, in the interest of providing proper local facilities of commerce, could be required to stop its interstate trains. In one case a State regulation requiring all regular passenger trains operating wholly within the State to stop at all county seats was held to have been validly applied to interstate connection trains;[799] while in the other case a statute requiring all passenger trains to stop at county seats was held invalid, there being "other and ample accommodation."[800] Comparing these and other like decisions, the Court has stated "the applicable general doctrine" to be as follows: (1) It is competent for a State to require adequate local facilities, even to the stoppage of interstate trains or the rearrangement of their schedules. (2) Such facilities existing—that is, the local conditions being adequately met—the obligation of the railroad is performed, and the stoppage of interstate trains becomes an improper and illegal interference with interstate commerce. (3) And this, whether the interference be directly by the legislature or by its command through the orders of an administrative body. (4) The fact of local facilities this court may determine, such fact being necessarily involved in the determination of the Federal question whether an order concerning an interstate train does or does not directly regulate interstate commerce, by imposing an arbitrary requirement.[801] "There is, however," it later added, "no inevitable test of the instances; the facts in each must be considered."[802]
In the same way a State regulation requiring intersecting railways to make track connections was held valid,[803] as was also a regulation requiring equality of car service between shippers;[804] while a regulation requiring the delivery of shipments on private sideways[805] and one requiring cars for local shipments to be furnished on demand, were held to be invalid.[806] In the first brace of decisions, the application of the local regulation to interstate commerce was found not to be "unduly" burdensome; in the second brace the contrary conclusion was reached.
SAFETY AND OTHER REGULATIONS