Constitutional Law: Power of Legislature to Regulate Rental Rates
1921
Michigan law review
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... ntent at http://about.jstor.org/participate--jstor/individuals/early-journal--content. JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary source objects. JSTOR helps people discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content through a powerful research and teaching platform, and preserves this content for future generations. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not--for--profit organization that also includes Ithaka S+R and Portico. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. RECENT IMPORTANT DECISIONS RECENT IMPORTANT DECISIONS farmer was omitting a class subject to the same temptations to combine for these purposes as any other class, and thus there was no reasonable basis for such a discrimination. Yet this stand is subject to the criticisms that appear in Mr. Justice McKenna's dissenting opinion in that case, in which he takes the view that the legislature has a wide range of discretion in the matter of classification, and that there is no evidence in the case to show that there was not a valid reason for legislating against combinations in the hands of traders, persons, and corporations, and exempting producers. The American Sugar Ref. Co. v. Louisiana, 179 U. S. 89, 21 Sup. Ct. 43, seems authority for such a classification, despite the fact that it is distinguished in the Cconnolly case, for, in the Sugar Refining Company case a certain tax is imposed upon the manufacturers of sugar and not upon the growers of that article, while in the principal case certain conduct is merely penalized as to certain classes in which farmers and associations of farmers are not included. Other grounds for regarding this a supportable classification appear in the fact that the aim of the Lever Act as a whole was to aid the production of necessities. That the legislature saw fit to exempt farmers from the section punishing monopolies, combinations in restraint of transportation, profiteering, etc., indicates that the legislators evidently considered that the danger of such evils was not so great in the case of this particular class of producers and that they considered that the need for. farm products, was so great as to warrant encouraging farmers to the extent of allowing them a free hand in the means that they might take to strengthen their position. Certainly there are distinct differences in the situation of the farming class, and it seems that the legislature might be left to determine the relation of these differences to the acts declared invalid. In analogous cases, similar exemptions have not been regarded as arbitrary, though class distinctions are scarcely as marked as in the principal case. In State v. McKay, 137 Tenn. 280, I93 S.
doi:10.2307/1276903
fatcat:nyp5jgappfao3mu7te4te33tze