Guthrie, William D. (1859–1935)
GUTHRIE, WILLIAM D. (1859–1935)
A corporation lawyer and professor of law at Columbia (1913–1922), William D. Guthrie was one of several prominent attorneys who successfully challenged the federal income tax in pollock v. farmers ' loan & trust company (1895). His most famous appearance before the Supreme Court, however, came in a losing cause: champion v. ames (1903). In that case, he advocated a doctrine edward s. corwin would later call dual federalism (and which the Supreme Court itself would adopt in hammer v. dagenhart, 1918). Drawing on his Lectures on the Fourteenth Article of Amendment to the Constitution (1898), Guthrie argued that the suppression of lotteries did not fall under the national commerce power because no commerce was involved. Such regulation belonged solely to the state police power, to which Guthrie accorded great deference. He also favored the rule of reason in anti-trust cases (though he was unable to convince the Court to accept it in united states v. trans-missouri freight association, 1897) and he vigorously opposed the sixteenth amendment on dual federalism grounds.
David Gordon
(1986)