THE POSTAL POWER OF CONGRESS A STUDY IN CONSTITUTIONAL EXPANSION BY LINDSAY ROGERS A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Board of University Studies of The Johns Hopkins University in Conformity with the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1915 Baltimore 1916 Copyright 1916 by THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS PRESS OF THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY LANCASTER, PA....

The purpose of this essay is to trace the legislative and judicial history of the grant to Congress of the power “to establish postoffices and postroads,” and to discuss the constitutionality of the proposals that, under this clause, federal control may be extended to subjects over which Congress has no direct authority. The essay is thus one in constitutional expansion, and does not consider the history or efficiency of the postoffice as an administrative arm of the government. A treatment of t

It is, perhaps, not insignificant that The Federalist contains but a single reference to the power lodged in Congress “to establish postoffices and postroads.” The writers of that incomparable collection of political papers which discussed in such exhaustive detail the disputed points of the proposed governmental frame-work for the United States of America, hardly needed to argue that the proposed delegation could not be deemed dangerous and was admittedly one of national concern. “The power of

Expansion of Facilities. —“Our whole economic, social and political system,” says President Hadley, “has become so dependent upon free and secure postal communication, that the attempt to measure its specific effects can be little less than a waste of words.” 49 This is hardly an overstatement of the case, yet, as we have seen, the importance of the postal function was recognized before the Constitution was adopted and when it comprehended only the transmission of intelligence. The increased imp

Legislative Action. —Apart from the postoffice, problems of road construction and internal improvements, by the necessities of development, almost immediately confronted the new nation, which scanned the delegated powers in the Federal Constitution, and not finding any specific authorization of congressional action, asserted the right upon several clauses, among them being the one to establish postroads. By 1793 there were only one hundred and ninety-five postoffices throughout the country 179 a

Like all grants to Congress, the postal power is not unrestrained, but, as the Supreme Court has expressed it, the difficulty in setting limits beyond which it may not go, arises, “not from want of power in Congress to prescribe the regulations as to what shall constitute mail matter, but from the necessity of enforcing them consistently with the rights reserved to the people, of far greater importance than the transportation of the mail.” 275 One, and perhaps the most important, of these rights

In the disputed zone between federal authority and the reserved rights of the states, interesting and often acute problems have, of course, frequently developed. The most important of these have probably been with regard to the national control of interstate commerce and the police power of the states, and several times Congress has passed legislation designed to leave certain subjects within the jurisdiction of the states or to make local regulations more effective. In Jefferson’s administratio

Federal Ownership of Railroads. —In an address at Indianapolis on May 30, 1907, President Roosevelt discussing the necessity for further congressional regulation of railway companies, declared that, “in so far as the common carriers also transport the mails, it is, in my opinion, probable that whether their business is or is not interstate, it is to the same extent subject to federal control, under that clause of the Constitution granting to the national government power to establish postroads,

It has already been indicated that, while the postal power of Congress is plenary, extending to the classification and exclusion of articles presented for transmission through the mails, it is not without limits; that its exercise is restricted by provisions found in the Constitution itself,—the guarantees of a free press and immunity from unreasonable searches and seizures. There is, moreover, a further important limitation in that an arbitrary refusal of postal facilities would seem to be a de

Lindsay Rogers was born in Baltimore on May 23, 1891. He attended the public schools, studied under private tutors, and received the degree of Bachelor of Arts from the Johns Hopkins University in 1912. He then began graduate work in Political Science under the direction of Professor Willoughby, with Private Law (LL.B., University of Maryland 1915) and Political Economy as subordinate subjects. He was a University Fellow, 1914–1915, and was admitted to the Maryland Bar in 1915. Since 1909 he has