STATE REGULATION OF INTERSTATE MOTOR CARRIERS

According to Article 1, section 8, of the Constitution, "The Congress shall have power . . . to regulate commerce . . . among the several States . . . . " Is this provision of the Constitution applicable to interstate motor transportation over a public highway, built, owned, and maintained by a State? The provincial view might have been put forward that because the State owns the highways, therefore it should have exclusive control with respect to the commerce passing over them. Whatever force might have been conceded such a view in the early history of our country, when inland transportation had not assumed great proportions, it was dispelled after the Civil War when the Supreme Court recognized restraints upon the power of the States to regulate interstate rail carriers.

Railroads were in a sense considered public highways, since railroad corporations with their various franchises and powers were the special creations of the States. But that fact did not operate to remove interstate commerce by rail from the operation of the commerce clause, or militate against the power of Congress to regulate interstate rail transportation.