Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. v. Oklahoma Corporation Commission

This quest by Southwestern Bell Telephone Company [SWB] for a neutral and detached tribunal does not turn on whether the Corporation Commission’s [Commission] public utility ratemaking may be described as “legislative ” but rather on (1) what process is constitutionally due the corporate owners (stockholders) of a public utility when the State, acting in the exercise of its ratemaking powers, seeks to affect their property interests and on (2) whether Oklahoma may withdraw from the Commission’s individual rate-making 1 the basic protections of due process *1011available to others by Art. II of the…