Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ Five days later the plaintiff filed this bill, setting up that the Commission's order was confiscatory and in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.
The objections to the bill are based on the provisions of the Minnesota statute for an appeal. Both the city and the street railway are given the right to appeal to the District Court of the county, and there the whole matter, fact and law, is to be tried before three judges, without a jury. ”

“ They are to find all material facts, including the fair value of the property and the reasonable rate of return, and to affirm, modify or reverse the order of the Commission, as may be required by law, the Commission being directed to conform to their judgment in its final order. There is a further resort to the Supreme Court. It is said that plaintiff was bound to exhaust the appeal thus granted before going elsewhere, and that it could not cut off the similar right of the City of Duluth. ”

“ It might be said that this Court would have to exercise its own judgment as to how the proceedings in the State Court should be characterized and not impossibly might regard them as legislative. Keller v. Potomac Electric Co., 261 U.S. 428, 43 S.C.t. 445, 67 L. Ed. 731. ”