The U.S. Supreme Court case Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railway Company v. People of the State of Illinois ex rel. Drainage Commissioners in 1905 revolved around a dispute between the railway company and the state over land drainage rights for agricultural purposes. The Drainage Commission had ordered that certain lands be drained to make them suitable for farming, which required building ditches across several railroad tracks owned by the railway company. The railway refused to comply with this order arguing it was unconstitutional as it violated their property rights without due process or just compensation under Fourteenth Amendment protections against arbitrary deprivation of property by states. However, upon reaching the Supreme Court, it was ruled that there were no constitutional violations involved in this matter because such orders fell within legitimate exercise of police powers vested in states for public health and welfare reasons like agriculture improvement projects etc., even if they incidentally affected private properties like railroads here without any direct compensations per se but indirectly benefited all including railways through overall economic growths etc.

In the dissenting opinion for Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railway Company v. People of the State of Illinois ex rel. Drainage Commissioners, Justice Harlan argued that the majority's decision was a departure from established principles governing relations between states and interstate commerce entities. He contended that it was not within a state’s power to impose upon an interstate carrier any burden which materially interferes with its operations as such or places it at a disadvantage in competition with other carriers outside of that state. The justice believed this case did not involve merely local interests but rather impacted national ones due to its implications on interstate commerce regulations. He asserted that if each state could regulate railway rates independently, there would be chaos in commercial transactions across different states leading to serious consequences for both railways and public alike.