Stafford v. Wallace - Significance, Stockyards In The Stream Of Commerce, Taking On The Monopolies, Defining And Expanding The Concept

court petitioner respondent authority

Petitioner

Stafford and Company, a firm engaged in the buying and selling of livestock

Respondent

Henry C. Wallace, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture

Petitioner's Claim

That the operation of stockyards did not constitute interstate commerce, and therefore Congress did not have authority under the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution to enforce the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921.

Chief Lawyer for Petitioner

E. Godman

Chief Lawyer for Respondent

James Montgomery Beck, U.S. Solicitor General

Justices for the Court

Louis D. Brandeis, John Hessin Clarke, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Joseph McKenna, Mahlon Pitney, William Howard Taft (writing for the Court), Willis Van Devanter

Justices Dissenting

James Clark McReynolds (William Rufus Day did not participate)

Place

Washington, D.C.

Date of Decision

1 May 1922

Decision

Upheld the authority of Congress to enforce the act over stockyards, which the Court ruled were not "places of rest or a final destination," but rather "a throat through which the current of commerce flows."

Additional Topics

Stafford v. Wallace - Stockyards In The Stream Of Commerce

In the early 1900s, the stockyards of Chicago, along with the steel mills of Pittsburgh and the financial markets of New York City, seemed to be a symbol of American economic power. Not surprisingly, perhaps, writer Upton Sinclair had set his controversial novel The Jungle (1906), which exposed corruption and brutality in business, in the stockyards of Chicago. Through the facilities of companies …

Stafford v. Wallace - Taking On The Monopolies

Swift appealed an injunction under the bill, and the case went before the Supreme Court in 1905 as Swift v. United States. The Court sustained the injunction, with a unanimous opinion written by Justice Holmes: "Although the combination alleged embraces restraint and monopoly of trade within a single state," Holmes wrote, "its effect upon commerce among the States is not accidental, secondary, rem…

Stafford v. Wallace - Defining And Expanding The Concept

The stockyards, Taft stated, "are not a place of rest or final destination" in interstate commerce; rather, they are "but a throat through which the current flows, and the transactions which occur there are only incident to this current from the West to the East, and from one state to another." The sale of stock within a yard could not therefore be merely local transactions. They create a local ch…

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