Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/725

689 POWERS OF CORPORATIONS CREATED BY CONGRESS 689 THE POWERS OF CORPORATIONS CREATED BY ACT OF CONGRESS 'T^HE Supreme Court of the United States has decided that the •*■ Federal Reserve Board may give national banks permission to engage in the business of acting as trustees and as executors and administrators and as registrars of stocks and bonds.^ This suggests the question whether there has been any modifica- tion of the doctrine of M'Culloch v. Maryland ^ and Osborn v. Bank of the United States,^ and what are the scope and extent of the powers that may be exercised by corporations created by act of Congress. The creation and control of corporations by federal statute has been suggested as a remedy for the evils arising out of the diversity and feebleness of state control over companies engaged in trans- portation or commercial business of nation-wide concern, and it has even been urged that existing state corporations should be required to accept incorporation under federal laws as a condition of being allowed to engage in commerce with foreign nations and among the states. With the growth of national consciousness Uttle need is felt of drawing very technically the lines between the spheres of state and federal legislation, and the present tendency is to ignore these distinctions and to consider rather the question of practical efficiency. It is important, therefore, that we should keep in mind the limitations which the Constitution has put upon the purposes for which Congress may create corporations and the powers with which corporations so created may be endowed. A corporation is something more than the personification of an association of individuals; its personality, its properties and powers are derived from the laws of the sovereignty by which it was authorized, or at least recognized, to be a legal person. It is not enough that an association of individuals has filed a certificate in a public office declaring itself to be a corporation and stating the objects and 1 First National Bank v. Union Trust Co., 244 U. S. 416 (1917), reversing the judgment of the supreme court of Michigan in 192 Mich. 640, 159 N. W. 335 (1916), and overruling the decision of the Supreme Court of Illinois in People v. Brady, 271 HI. 100, no N. E. 864 (1915). 2 4 Wheat. (U. S.) 316 (1819). ' 9 Wheat. (U. S.) 738 (1824).