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Date: Wed, 03 Dec 1997 12:57:58 -0800
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From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: THE RIGHT TO BE FREE FROM MONOPOLIES (fwd)
<snip>
>
> "Perpetuities and monopolies are contrary
> to the genius of a free State and ought not
> to be allowed."/1/
>
>
>The below is excerpted from
>
>The Intended Significance of the Fourteenth Amendment
>by Chester James Antieau (1997), at pages 320-321:
>
>THE RIGHT TO BE FREE FROM MONOPOLIES
>
> American colonists had suffered economically at the hands of monopolies
>granted by the British Crown and throughout the new Republic it was
>generally vowed that constitutional protection against monopolies was
>necessary for others to be free. The North Carolina Constitution is
>representative. It provided: "Perpetuities and monopolies are contrary to
>the genius of a free State and ought not to be allowed."/1/
>
> In 1866-8, as the Fourteenth Amendment was proposed and ratified, it was
>known that American courts, with and without such constitutional clauses,
>had recognized a duty to protect free people from monopolists.
>Illustratively, the North Carolina Court in 1855 had held unconstitutional
>a legislative act giving one individual a grant of an exclusive right to
>erect a bridge at a fixed location, and ordaining that no one else should
>ever be given power to erect a bridge on that stream within six miles./2/
>The following year, the Connecticut Supreme Court voided a legislative act
>giving one corporation an exclusive right to lay gas pipes under the
>streets of a city. Said this Court: "The whole theory of a free people is
>opposed to such grants."/3/
>
> In 1866 the Illinois Supreme Court annulled a legislative act which gave a
>monopoly to owners of a single slaughtering plant in Chicago. The Illinois
>Court remarked that the act "impairs the rights of all other persons, and
>cuts them off from a share in not only a legal, but a necessary business."
>This, concluded the Court, was contrary to a basic concept of America law,
>"the principle of equality of rights."/4/ There were other comparable
>rulings before 1868, and it is safe to conclude from the foregoing judicial
>authority and the common constitutional clauses,/5/ that Americans deemed
>fundamental their right to be free from monopolies, a right particularly
>suited to be protected by the Equal Protection Clause.
>
>ENDNOTES
>
>/1/ - North Carolina Constitution of 1776, Declaration of Rights, 23.
>
>/2/ - McRee v. Wilimgton & Raleigh Rail Co. (1855) 47 N.C. 186.
>
>/3/ - Norwich Gas Light Co. v. Norwich City Gas Co. (1856) 25 Conn. 19, 38.
>
>/4/ - City of Chicago v. Rumpff (1866) 45 I11.90, 97.
>
>/5/ - E.g., Connecticut Constitution of 1818, Art. I, Sec. 1; Tennessee
>Constitution of 1834, Art. I, Sec. 22; Oregon Constitution of 1857, Art. I,
>Sec. 21; Ohio Constitution of 1851, Art. I, Sec. 2; Indiana Constitution of
>1851, Art. I, Sec. 23; Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, Part. I, Art.
>VI; North Carolina Constitution of 1776, Declaration of Rights, No. 23;
>Arkansas Constitution of 1865, Art. II, 19, and Florida Constitution of
>1865, Art I, 23. These were all States that effectuated the Fourteenth
>Amendment by ratification.
>
> ###
>
<snip>
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