Author: Earl Latham
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674689510
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Author: James W. Ely, Jr.
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700611444
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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No enterprise is so seductive as a railroad for the influence it exerts, the power it gives, and the hope of gain it offers.—Poor's Manual of Railroads (1900) At its peak, the railroad was the Internet of its day in its transformative impact on American life and law. A harbinger and promoter of economic empire, it was also the icon of a technological revolution that accelerated national expansion and in the process transformed our legal system. James W. Ely Jr., in the first comprehensive legal history of the rail industry, shows that the two institutions-the railroad and American law-had a profound influence on each other. Ely chronicles how "America's first big business" impelled the creation of a vast array of new laws in a country where long-distance internal transport had previously been limited to canals and turnpikes. Railroads, the first major industry to experience extensive regulation, brought about significant legal innovations governing interstate commerce, eminent domain, private property, labor relations, and much more. Much of this development was originally designed to serve the interests of the railroads themselves but gradually came to contest and control the industry's power and exploitative tendencies. As Ely reveals, despite its great promise and potential as an engine of prosperity and uniter of far-flung regions, the railroad was not universally admired. Railroads uprooted people, threatened local autonomy, and posed dangers to employees and the public alike-situations with unprecedented legal ramifications. Ely explores the complex and sometimes contradictory ways in which those ramifications played out, as railroads crossed state lines and knitted together a diverse nation with thousands of miles of iron rail. Epic in its scope, Railroads and American Law makes a complex subject accessible to a wide range of readers, from legal historians to railroad buffs, and shows the many ways in which a powerful industry brought change and innovation to America.

Author: William E. Leuchtenburg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199839387
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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For almost sixty years, the results of the New Deal have been an accepted part of political life. Social Security, to take one example, is now seen as every American's birthright. But to validate this revolutionary legislation, Franklin Roosevelt had to fight a ferocious battle against the opposition of the Supreme Court--which was entrenched in laissez faire orthodoxy. After many lost battles, Roosevelt won his war with the Court, launching a Constitutional revolution that went far beyond anything he envisioned. In The Supreme Court Reborn, esteemed scholar William E. Leuchtenburg explores the critical episodes of the legal revolution that created the Court we know today. Leuchtenburg deftly portrays the events leading up to Roosevelt's showdown with the Supreme Court. Committed to laissez faire doctrine, the conservative "Four Horsemen"--Justices Butler, Van Devanter, Sutherland, and McReynolds, aided by the swing vote of Justice Owen Roberts--struck down one regulatory law after another, outraging Roosevelt and much of the Depression-stricken nation. Leuchtenburg demonstrates that Roosevelt thought he had the backing of the country as he prepared a scheme to undermine the Four Hoursemen. Famous (or infamous) as the "Court-packing plan," this proposal would have allowed the president to add one new justice for every sitting justice over the age of seventy. The plan picked up considerable momentum in Congress; it was only after a change in the voting of Justice Roberts (called "the switch in time that saved nine") and the death of Senate Majority Leader Joseph T. Robinson that it shuddered to a halt. Rosevelt's persistence led to one of his biggest legislative defeats. Despite the failure of the Court-packing plan, however, the president won his battle with the Supreme Court; one by one, the Four Horsemen left the bench, to be replaced by Roosevelt appointees. Leuchtenburg explores the far-reaching nature of FDR's victory. As a consequence of the Constitutional Revolution that began in 1937, not only was the New Deal upheld (as precedent after precedent was overturned), but also the Court began a dramatic expansion of Civil liberties that would culminate in the Warren Court. Among the surprises was Senator Hugo Black, who faced widespread opposition for his lack of qualifications when he was appointed as associate justice; shortly afterward, a reporter revealed that he had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Despite that background, Black became an articulate spokesman for individual liberty. William E. Leuchtenburg is one of America's premier historians, a scholar who combines depth of learning with a graceful style. This superbly crafted book sheds new light on the great Constitutional crisis of our century, illuminating the legal and political battles that created today's Supreme Court.

Author: Robert Sobel
Publisher: Beard Books
ISBN: 9781893122888
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Author: James Sloss
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Railroads
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Railroad network rationalization constitutes a process of adjusting the size and configuration of the railroad plant and its utilization in conformity with current and prospective volumes of traffic to obtain optimum efficiency in costs and levels of service. This report reviews the nature and scope of prior efforts to rationalize rail networks, including the Transportation Act of 1920, the Emergency Transportation Act of 1933, abandonments, mergers, and rail-highway coordination. It has been found that, in most respects, these prior schemes have either failed entirely or have achieved less than their anticipated success. Numerous opportunities for improving industry performance have been hampered by interfirm rivalries, managerial insensitivity, employee organizations' opposition, and regulatory constraints imposed by statute or by directive. A recognition both of these restraining factors and of the potential benefits should advance the rationalization process in the future.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Carriers
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Author: G. William Domhoff
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804779023
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Class and Power in the New Deal provides a new perspective on the origins and implementation of the three most important policies that emerged during the New Deal—the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the National Labor Relations Act, and the Social Security Act. It reveals how Northern corporate moderates, representing some of the largest fortunes and biggest companies of that era, proposed all three major initiatives and explores why there were no viable alternatives put forward by the opposition. More generally, this book analyzes the seeming paradox of policy support and political opposition. The authors seek to demonstrate the superiority of class dominance theory over other perspectives—historical institutionalism, Marxism, and protest-disruption theory—in explaining the origins and development of these three policy initiatives. Domhoff and Webber draw on extensive new archival research to develop a fresh interpretation of this seminal period of American government and social policy development.

Author: G. William Domhoff
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000011747
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 582

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The Corporate Rich and the Power Elite in the Twentieth Century demonstrates exactly how the corporate rich developed and implemented the policies and created the government structures that allowed them to dominate the United States. The book is framed within three historical developments that have made this domination possible: the rise and fall of the union movement, the initiation and subsequent limitation of government social-benefit programs, and the postwar expansion of international trade. The book’s deep exploration into the various methods the corporate rich used to centralize power corrects major empirical misunderstandings concerning all three issue-areas. Further, it explains why the three ascendant theories of power in the early twenty-first century—interest-group pluralism, organizational state theory, and historical institutionalism—cannot account for the complexity of events that established the power elite’s supremacy and led to labor’s fall. More generally, and convincingly, the analysis reveals how a corporate-financed policy-planning network, consisting of foundations, think tanks, and policy-discussion groups, gradually developed in the twentieth century and played a pivotal role in all three issue-areas. Filled with new archival findings and commanding detail, this book offers readers a remarkable look into the nature of power in America during the twentieth century, and provides a starting point for future in-depth analyses of corporate power in the current century.

Author: Lawrence S. Rothenberg
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472104437
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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A major study of federal regulation

Author: Mark H. Rose
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
ISBN: 0814210368
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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"From 1920 to the mid-1990s, American transportation in the form of railroads, trucks, and airlines was simply a creature of politics and public policy. In brief, the markets for rail, truck, and airlines were not natural entities, but had been created through hard-fought political contests, full-time lobbying, and unceasing litigation. Between 1940 and the late 1970s, moreover, leaders of rail, truck, and airline firms lobbied and litigated to protect the workings of this regulatory regime." "In the mid-1950s, President Eisenhower asked Congress to award railroad executives authority to modify prices and service. Eisenhower was concerned about a railroad industry in decline. During the 1960s, President Johnson sought broad deregulation of rail, trucks, and airline firms. Johnson wanted another device to "fine tune" the economy. In the 1970s, Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter sought to deregulate transportation with a view toward reversing "stagflation." Between 1978 and 1980, Congress and President Carter approved deregulation of airlines, trucking, and railroads. Carter aide Mary Schuman played a crucial role in bringing about airline deregulation. For all the market talk that surrounded transportation politics before and after 1980, however, officials of the American state had been and remained the principal agents creating those markets."--BOOK JACKET.