ABSTRACT
The independent regulatory commissions have been treated as institutional outliers in the US administrative state under the assumption that the Interstate Commerce Commission, the first of its kind dedicated to the regulation of railroads, took after state-level railroad commissions. Through an intensive reinvestigation of the legislative creation of the 1887 Act to Regulate Commerce that established the commission, this chapter demonstrates that such a view is unfounded. Although inspired by state-level commissions, the commission was actually designed by Sen. Shelby Cullom and his collaborators with judicial courts in mind, in the wake of strong criticism from those committed to the common law’s supremacy of law principle allowing adjudication of legal conflicts regarding private rights only to judicial courts. The institutional features of the commission were devised so that it would at once be powerful enough to regulate effectively and not infringe judicial power. After its creation, the commission was intentionally operated in a courtlike fashion by members who were almost without exception lawyers by profession. All three branches of the government promoted the judicialization of the ICC, and by the Progressive Era, it was widely considered a model administrative agency because of its strong judiciality.
