1900. | HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. 52 
excludes that of Congress wherever the former really obtains, he 
himself makes no such claim. He ventures no more than to take 
Chief Justice Taney’s position and that of Chief Justice Marshall 
in Wilson vs. Blackbird Creek Marsh Company, that the states 
may act, but not contrary to the express will of Congress. He 
hardly suggests that there ever was a question as to which should 
- prevail in a real conflict. 
At the same term, in * Minnesota vs. Barbour, another police 
law was held bad as an infringement on the domain of Congress. 
Henry E. Baker was convicted before a justice of the peace in 
Ramsey county, Minnesota, of selling for food one hundred pounds 
of fresh beef, part of an animal killed in Illinois that had not been 
inspected and certified healthy before slaughter, as required by 
Minnesota statute. He procured a writ of habeas corpus from the 
United States Circuit Court, and was discharged on the ground 
that the Minnesota statute was an infringement on the constitution 
of the United States. The state authorities appealed. 
The law prohibited any sale of fresh meat for human food unless 
within twenty-four hours before its slaughter it was inspected and 
found in a suitable condition and a certificate to that effect given 
by the state inspector. The court held that it was not a matter of 
common experience of which it would take judicial notice that 
animals destined for food required to be inspected on foot just 
before being slaughtered. ‘The law was held bad as being an effort 
to exclude meats from other states and not warranted by any 
necessity of police. 
At the same * session the court refused to issue a writ of habeas 
corpus for Kemmler. He had been condemned in New York to 
suffer death by an electric shock. He claimed that this was an 
unconstitutional punishment, but the court declined to hear him. 
In the case of * Rahrer an application for a writ of habeas corpus 
was madein the Circyit Court of the United States for the District 
of Kansas by Charles A. Rahrer, claiming that he was detained by 
the sheriff of Shawnee county in that state in violation of the fed- 
eral constitution. It appeared that Maynard & Hopkins, whole- 
sale liquor dealers of Kansas City, in June, 1890, appointed Rahrer 
their agent in Topeka, Kan., to sell their liquors in the ‘* original 
packages’’ in which they were shipped, and in July of that year 
171386 U. S,, 313 (1890). 2 Td., 436 (1890). 
$740 U. S., 545 (1891). 
