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The postal power of Congress: A study in constitutional expansion

Chapter 2: PREFACE
By Lindsay Rogers
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About This Book

The dissertation traces the legislative and judicial history of the constitutional grant allowing Congress to create post offices and post roads, and analyzes how that authority has been expanded through statutes and court rulings. It examines congressional powers to establish postal facilities and routes, regulate mail carriage, and punish postal crimes, while assessing constitutional limits such as freedom of the press and protections against unreasonable searches. The study reviews state attempts to interfere, federal efforts to control transportation and communications infrastructure including railways, telegraph and telephone systems, and the use of exclusion from the mails as a regulatory device, weighing doctrinal developments alongside practical implications.

PREFACE

The purpose of this essay is to trace the legislative and judicial history of the grant to Congress of the power “to establish postoffices and postroads,” and to discuss the constitutionality of the proposals that, under this clause, federal control may be extended to subjects over which Congress has no direct authority. The essay is thus one in constitutional expansion, and does not consider the history or efficiency of the postoffice as an administrative arm of the government. A treatment of this subject, which has as yet received scant notice, I may some day attempt.

Portions of Chapters IV and VII have appeared as articles on “Federal Interference with the Freedom of the Press,” and “The Extension of Federal Control through the Regulation of the Mails,” in the Yale Law Journal (May, 1914) and the Harvard Law Review (November, 1913) respectively. They have been thoroughly revised for publication in their present form. Chapter V appeared in substantially the same form in the Virginia Law Review (November, 1915).

I am under great obligations to Professor W. W. Willoughby, not only for much direct assistance in the preparation of this essay, but for the inspiration of his productive scholarship.

L. R.