I & II, our Power "is legitimate only in the last resort, and as a necessity in the determination of real, earnest, and vital controversy between individuals,"

The Court will not pass upon the constitutionality of legislation in a friendly, non-adversary, proceeding, declining because to decide such questions "is legitimate only in the last resort, and as a necessity in the determination of real, earnest and vital controversy between individuals. It never was the thought that, by means of a friendly suit, a party beaten in the legislature …

The commission has been empowered to determine "just and reasonable" telephone rates (Public Service Law, § 91, subd. 1; § 97, subd. 1) and, as the United States Supreme Court noted many years ago, the rate-making power is not "subservient to the discretion of [a utility] which may, by exorbitant and unreasonable salaries, or in some other improper way, transfer …

—honest and actual antagonistic assertion of rights by one individual against another, there is presented a question involving the validity of any act of any legislature, State or Federal, and the decision necessarily rests on the competency of the legislature to so enact, the court must, in the exercise of its solemn duties, determine whether the act be constitutional or not; but …

III notion that federal courts may exercise power only "in the last resort, and as a necessity," and only when adjudication is "consistent with a system of separated powers and [the dispute is one] traditionally thought to be capable of resolution through the judicial process

The United States Supreme Court requires strict compliance with this jurisdictional-standing requirement.

However, several of the cases cited by Mr. Justice Brandeis in illustrating the rules of self-governance articulated purely constitutional grounds for decision.

—so plainly and palpably unreasonable as to make their enforcement equivalent to the taking of property for public use without such compensation as under all the circumstances is just both to the owner and to the public; that is, judicial interference should never occur unless the case presents, clearly and beyond all doubt, such a flagrant attack upon the rights of property …

"The legislature has power to fix rates, and the extent of judicial interference is protection against unreasonable rates."

[CITATION] TRIMBLE. Same v. Carter