Railway Express Agency v. New York 336 U.S. 106 (1949)
RAILWAY EXPRESS AGENCY v. NEW YORK 336 U.S. 106 (1949)
Railway Express is a leading modern example of the Supreme Court's deference to legislative judgments in the field of economic regulation. The Court unanimously upheld a New York City "traffic safety" ordinance forbidding advertisements on vehicles but exempting delivery vehicles advertising their owners' businesses. No one mentioned the first amendment. (See commercial speech.) Justice william o. douglas, for the Court, first waved away a due process attack on the ordinance. Turning to the companion equal protection attack, Douglas said that the city "may well have concluded" that advertising vehicles presented a greater traffic hazard than did trucks carrying their owners' messages. "We cannot say that that judgment is not an allowable one." The opinion typifies the Court's use of the most deferential rational basis review of economic regulation.
Justice robert h. jackson expressed some doubt as to the Court's reasoning but concurred, referring to the law's historic distinctions between "doing in self-interest and doing for hire." Along the way he uttered the decision's most memorable words: "there is no more effective practical guarantee against arbitrary and unreasonable government than to require that the principles of law which officials would impose on a minority must be imposed generally."
Kenneth L. Karst
(1986)