# Munn v. Illinois (1877) **Decided:** March 1, 1877 · Chief Justice Morrison Waite · 7–2 (Field and Strong dissenting) The lead case of the Granger Cases, upholding an Illinois statute setting maximum storage rates for grain elevators in cities over 100,000. Waite's holding supplied the constitutional license for economic regulation of private business: "When one devotes his property to a use in which the public has an interest, he must submit to public control for the common good, to the extent of that interest created." Property "clothed with a public interest" may be rate-regulated without violating the Fourteenth Amendment. The doctrine survived less than a decade in its most useful application. *Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railway v. Illinois* (1886) held that states could not reach **interstate** rates at all — leaving farmers with a right that no state could enforce against the railroads that mattered. The resulting vacuum produced the [[Interstate Commerce Act]] in 1887 and the [[Sherman Antitrust Act]] in 1890. > Stub — fill out. See [[US Antitrust and Monopoly Timeline]].