Matters stood thus when the government brought process to dissolve the
Standard Oil Company, as an unlawful combination. The cause was decided
on May 15, 1911, the Chief Justice speaking for the majority of the
bench, in one of the most suggestive opinions which I have ever read. To
me this opinion, like Taney's opinion in the Charles River Bridge Case,
indicates that the tension had reached the breaking point, the court
yielding in all directions at once, while the dominant preoccupation of
the presiding judge seemed to be to plant his tribunal in such a
position that it could so yield, without stultifying itself hopelessly
before the legal profession and the public. In striving to reach this
position, however, I apprehend that the Chief Justice, unreservedly,
crossed the chasm on whose brink American jurists had been shuddering
for ninety years. The task the Chief Justice assumed was difficult
almost beyond precedent. He proposed to surrender to the vested
interests the principle of _reasonableness_ which they demanded, and
which the tribunal he represented, together with Congress, had refused
to surrender for fifteen years.
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