Stoutenburgh v. Hennick

Me. Chief Justioe Fullee,

after' stating-the case, delivered the opinion of the court:

It is a cardinal principle of our system of. government, that local affairs shall be managed by local authorities, and general affairs by the c'entral authority, and hence, while the r.ule is also fundamental that the power' to make laws cannot be delegated, the creation of municipalities exercising local self-government has never been held to trench upon that rule.Such legislation is not regarded, as a transfer of general- legislative power, but rather as the grant of the authority to prescribe local regulations, according to immemorial practice, subject of course to the interposition of the superior in cases of necessity.

Congress has express power “ to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases, whatsoever ” over the District of Columbia, thus possessing the combined powers of a general and of a State government in all cases where legislation is possible. But- as-the repository of the legislative power of the United-States, Congress in creating the District of Columbia “ a body corporate for municipal purposes ” could only authorize it to exercise municipal powers, and this is all that Congress attempted to do.

The act of the Legislative Assembly under which Hennick was convicted, imposed, as stated in its title, “a license on trades, business, and professions practiced or carried on in the' District of Columbia,” and required by clause three of section-twenty-one, among other persons in- trade, commercial agents,', whose business it was to offer merchandise for sale by sample, to take out and pay for such license. • This provision- was manifestly regarded as a regulation of a purely municipal character, as is perfectly obvious, upon the principle' of noscitur a sociis, if the clause be taken as it. should be, in connection with the other clauses and -parts of. the act.- 'But. *148it is indistinguishable from- that held void in Robbins v. Shelby Taxing District, 120 U. S. 489, and Asher v. Texas, 128 U. S. 129, as being a regulation of interstate commerce, so far as applicable to persons soliciting, as Ilennick was, the sale of goods on behalf of individuals or firms doing business outside the District.

The conclusions announced in the case of Dobbins were that 'the power granted .to Congress to regulate commerce is necessarily exclusive whenever the subjects of it are national or admit only of. one uniform system or plan of regulation throughout the. country, and in such case the failure of Congress to miake express regulations is equivalent to indicating its will that the subject shall be left free; that in the matter of interstate commerce the United States are but one country, and are and must be subject to one system of regulations, and not to a multitude of systems; and that a State statute requiring persons soliciting the sale of goods on behalf of individuals or firms doing business in another State to pay license fees for permission to do so, is, in the absence of congressional action, a regulation of commerce in violation of the Constitution. The business referred to is thus definitively assigned to that class of-subjects which calls for uniform rules and national legislation, and is excluded from that class which can be best regulated by rules and provisions suggested by the varying circumstances of different localities, and limited in their operation • to such localities respectively. Cooley v. Board of Wardens, 12 How. 299; Gilman v. Philadelphia, 3 Wall. 713. It falls, therefore, within the domain of the great, distinct, substantive power to regulate commerce, the exercise of which cannot be treated as a mere matter of local concern, and committed to those immediately interested in the affairs of a particular locality

It is forcibly argued that it is beyond the power of Congress to pass a law of the character in question solely for the Dis- ' trict of Columbia, because whenever Congress acts upon the subject, the regulations it establishes must constitute a system applicable’ to the whole country; but the disposition of this case calls for no. expression of opinion upon that point.

*149In our judgment Congress, for the reasons given, could not' have delegated the power to enact the 3d clause of the 21st section of the act of assembly, construed to include business agents such as Hennick, and there is nothing in this record to justify the assumption that it endeavored to do- so, for the powers granted to the District were municipal merely, and although by several acts, Congress repealed or modified parts of this particular by-law, these parts were separably operative and such as were within the scope of municipal action, so that this congressional legislation cannot be resorted to as ratifying the objectionable clause, irrespective of the inability, to ratify that which could not originally have been authorized.-

The- judgment of the Supreme Court of the District is

■Affirmed.