The Fourteenth Amendment will not be construed as introducing a
factitious equality without regard to practical differences that
are best met by corresponding differences of treatment.
Where a distinction may be made in the evil that delinquents are
forced to suffer, a difference in establishing the delinquency may
also be justifiable, and a state may provide for a different method
of determining
Page 217 U. S. 414
the guilt of a corporation from that of an individual without
violating the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,
and so
held as to the provisions in the antitrust statute
of Tennessee of 1903 prohibiting arrangements for lessening
competition under which corporations are proceeded against by bill
in equity for ouster, while individuals are proceeded against as
criminals by indictment, trial, and punishment on conviction.
A transaction is not necessarily interstate commerce because it
relates to a transaction of interstate commerce, and so
held that a statute of Tennessee prohibiting arrangements
within the state for lessening competition is not void as a
regulation of interstate commerce as to sales made by persons
without the state to persons within the state.
While a federal question exists as to whether unequal protection
of the law is afforded by excluding a class from the defense of the
statute of limitations, the construction of the statute as to its
scope is for the state court, and does not present a federal
question.
120 Tenn. 86 affirmed.
The facts, which involve the constitutionality of certain
provisions of the antitrust statute of Tennessee of 1903, are
stated in the opinion.
Page 217 U. S. 419
MR. JUSTICE HOLMES delivered the opinion of the Court.
The plaintiff in error is a Kentucky corporation, and seeks to
reverse a decree of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, forbidding it
to do business, other than interstate commerce, in the latter
state. 120 Tenn. 86. The ground of the decree is that the
corporation and certain named agents entered into an arrangement
for the purpose and with the effect of lessening competition in the
sale of oil at Gallatin, Tennessee, and with the further result of
advancing the price of oil there. The acts proved against the
corporation were held to entail the ouster under a statute of
Tennessee. Act of March 16, 1903. The corporation brings the case
here on the contentions that the statute, as construed by the
court, is contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment, and also is an
unconstitutional interference with commerce among the states.
Page 217 U. S. 420
The basis of the former contention is that, by ยง 3 of the act,
any violation of it is made a crime, punishable by fine,
imprisonment, or both, and that this section has been construed as
applicable only to natural persons.
Standard Oil Co. v.
State, 117 Tenn. 618. Hence, it is said, this statute denies
to corporations the equal protection of the laws. For although it
is addressed generally to the prevention of a certain kind of
conduct, whether on the part of corporations or unincorporated men,
the latter cannot be tried without a preliminary investigation by a
grand jury, an indictment or presentment, a trial by jury, the
right to an acquittal unless their guilt is established beyond a
reasonable doubt, and the benefit of a statute of limitations of
one year. Corporations, on the other hand, are proceeded against by
bill in equity on relation of the attorney general, without any of
these advantages, except, perhaps, the right to a jury. Complaint
is not made of the difference between fine or imprisonment and
ouster, but it is insisted that this is a general criminal statute,
that ouster is a punishment as much as a fine, and that it is not a
condition attached to the doing of business by foreign
corporations,
Carroll v. Greenwich Insurance Co.,
199 U. S. 401,
199 U. S. 409,
or, indeed, a regulation of the conduct of corporations, as such at
all. Therefore the plaintiff in error complains that it is given a
wrongful immunity from the procedure of the criminal law. This suit
is for the same transaction for which, in the earlier case cited
above, an agent of the company was indicted and fined.
The foregoing argument is one of the many attempts to construe
the Fourteenth Amendment as introducing a factitious equality
without regard to practical differences that are best met by
corresponding differences of treatment. The law of Tennessee sees
fit to seek to prevent a certain kind of conduct. To prevent it,
the threat of fine and imprisonment is likely to be efficient for
men, while the latter is impossible and the former less serious to
corporations. On the other hand, the threat of extinction or ouster
is not
Page 217 U. S. 421
monstrous, and yet is likely to achieve the result with
corporations, while it would be extravagant as applied to men.
Hence, this difference is admitted to be justifiable. But the
admission goes far to destroy the argument that is made. For if a
fundamental distinction may be made in the evils that different
delinquents are forced to suffer, surely the less important and
ancient distinction between the modes of establishing the
delinquency, according to the nature of the evil inflicted, even
more easily may be justified. The supreme court of the state says
that the present proceeding is of a civil nature; but assuming that
nevertheless it ends in punishment, there is nothing novel or
unusual about it. We are of opinion that subjection to it, with its
concomitant advantages and disadvantages, is not an inequality of
which the plaintiff in error can complain, although natural persons
are given the benefit of the rules to which we have referred before
incurring the possible sentence to prison, which the plaintiff in
error escapes.
The second objection to the statute is that, although construed
by the court to apply to domestic business only, nevertheless it is
held to warrant turning the defendant out of the state for an
interference with interstate trade. The transaction complained of
was inducing merchants in Gallatin to revoke orders on a rival
company for oil to be shipped from Pennsylvania by an agreement to
give them 300 gallons of oil. It is said that, as the only illegal
purpose that can be attributed to this agreement is that of
protecting the defendants' oil against interstate competition, it
could not be made the subject of punishment by the state; that the
offense, if any, is against interstate commerce alone.
The cases that have gone as far as any in favor of this
proposition are those that hold invalid taxes upon sales by
traveling salesmen so far as they affect commerce among the states.
Robbins v. Shelby County Taxing District, 120 U.
S. 489;
Rearick v. Pennsylvania, 203 U.
S. 507. These cases fall short of the conclusion to
which they are supposed to
Page 217 U. S. 422
point. Regulations of the kind that they deal with concern the
commerce itself, the conduct of the men engaged in it, and as so
engaged. The present statute deals with the conduct of third
persons, strangers to the business. It does not regulate the
business at all. It is not even directed against interference with
that business specifically, but against acts of a certain kind that
the state disapproves in whatever connection. The mere fact that it
may happen to remove an interference with commerce among the states
as well with the rest does not invalidate it. It hardly would be an
answer to an indictment for forgery that the instrument forged was
a foreign bill of lading, or for assault and battery that the
person assaulted was engaged in peddling goods from another state.
How far Congress could deal with such cases we need not consider,
but certainly there is nothing in the present state of the law, at
least, that excludes the states from a familiar exercise of their
power.
See Field v. Barber Asphalt Co., 194 U.
S. 618,
194 U. S.
623.
There is an attempt also to bring this case within the statute
of limitations. It was permissible for the corporation to contend
that it was discriminated against unconstitutionally by being
excluded from that defense, and we have dealt with the argument
that it was so. But the scope of the state statutes was for the
state court to determine, and is not open here.
Decree affirmed.