Champion v. Ames

188 U.S. 321 (1903)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

Champion (D) shipped a box of lottery tickets from Texas to California. He was arrested for conspiracy to violate the Federal Lottery Act of 1895. The Act prohibited importing, mailing, or transporting any lottery ticket from one state to another. D obtained a writ of habeas corpus, challenging the constitutionality of the Act. D insists that the carrying of lottery tickets from one state to another state by an express company engaged in carrying freight and packages from state to state, although such tickets may be contained in a box or package, does not constitute commerce among the states. The government insists that express companies, when engaged, for hire, in the business of transportation from one state to another, are instrumentalities of commerce among the states; that the carrying of lottery tickets from one state to another is commerce which Congress may regulate, and that, as a means of executing the power to regulate interstate commerce, Congress may make it an offense against the United States to cause lottery tickets to be carried from one state to another. His writ was denied, and D appealed.