The Railroad Bill and the Court of Commerce

The new railroad bill considerably widens the domain of federal control over interstate railroad transportation, and should serve to elevate the Interstate Commerce Commission to a position of correspondingly enhanced influence. New matters have been subjected to the jurisdiction of that body, and its powers in those matters already confided to it are substantially augmented in important particulars. But interesting as are these portions of the new law in themselves, they represent in the main nothing more than extensions and elaborations of principles already firmly established in former Acts regulating interstate commerce. To the student of constitutional law they present no problem that has not been thoroughly discussed in the debates over previous bills or settled by the courts. His attention, however, is at once arrested by the court feature of the new bill, although this occupied a position of secondary importance in the debates in Congress. This newly created Court of Commerce represents a notable innovation in the judicial system of the United States. It is a tribunal unlike any other known to American law, and its establishment warns us that even the judiciary may not wholly escape the effect of the universal tendency toward specialization which is such a prominent feature of modern life.