Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ Furthermore, in the present case it is not pretended that local welfare needs the removal of the defendants' bridges at the expense of the dominant requirements of commerce with other states, but merely that it would be helped by raising them. The fact that the court cannot order them to be raised does not justify a judgment that they be destroyed even in the avowed expectation that what it wants but cannot command is all that will come to pass. ”

“ The supreme court recognized that it could not order the bridges to be raised to the required height without the authority of the Secretary of War. Therefore we may lay on one side the somewhat surprising answer made to the allegations that the consent of the city and other railroads was necessary and was refused,-the suggestion, namely, that if the defendants wanted to do it they would find some way of reaching their end. ”

“ But that subject-matter is under the exclusive control of Congress, and is not one that it has left to the states until there shall be further action on its part. The freedom from interference on the part of the states is not confined to a simple prohibition of laws impairing it, but extends to interference by any ultimate organ. ”