Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/345

309 FEDERAL CONTROL OF INTRASTATE RAILROAD RATES 309 there seem to be two well-settled rules precluding any construc- tion of the section which would sustain the power of the state to control rates, etc., initiated by the President. In the first place, when a statute creates a right and provides a particular remedy for its enforcement, such remedy is generally held to be exclusive.^* This rule is apparently bottomed on legisla- tive intention, as the Supreme Court points out in United States v. Stevenson,^^ where Mr. Justice Day said : "The contention of the defendants in error is that the action for a penalty is exclusive of all other means of enforcing the act, and that an indictment will not lie as for an alleged offense within the terms of the act. The general principle is invoked that where a statute creates a right and prescribes a particular remedy that remedy, and none other, can be resorted to. An illustration of this doctrine is found in Globe Newspaper Company v. Walker, 210 U. S. 356, in which it was held that in the copyright statutes then in force Congress had provided a system of rights and remedies complete and exclusive in their character. This was held because, after a review of the history of the legislation, such, it was concluded, was the intention of Congress. " The rule which excludes other remedies where a statute creates a right and provides a special remedy for its enforcement rests upon the pre- sumed prohibition of all other remedies. If such prohibition is intended to reach the Government in the use of known rights and remedies, the language must be clear and specific to that effect. Dollar Savings Bank V, United States, 19 Wall. 227, 238, 239. In the present case, if it could be gathered from the terms of the statute, read in the light of the his- tory of its enactment, that Congress has here provided an exclusive remedy intended to take from the Government the right to proceed by indictment, and leaving to it only an action for the penalty, civil in its nature, then no indictment will He, and the coiurt below was correct in its conclusion." That this general rule may properly be invoked in determining the correct construction of the Federal Control Act would seem apparent from the following considerations: (a) Had Congress intended to continue the remedial procedure heretofore applicable in connection with rates, etc., it would have been extremely easy for Congress to have used simple language " Globe Newspaper Co. v. Walker, 210 U. S. 356 (1908). " 215 U. S. 190, 197 (1909).