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16 Harv. L. Rev. 555 (1902-1903)
Limitations upon the Right of Withdrawal from Public Employment

handle is hein.journals/hlr16 and id is 577 raw text is: WITHDRAWAL FROM PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT 555 LIMITATIONS UPON THE RIGHT OF WITH- DRAWAL FROM PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT. T HE law of public callings, although a very interesting branch of legal knowledge, and one rapidly assuming great importance in connection with the development of our economic system, has received only partial and fragmentary treatment from legal writers, and still furnishes a fruitful field for investigation. The present writer has already published certain opinions and authorities on the question of what constitutes a public calling.I In this article it is proposed to discuss one of the incidents of such employments, - the duty, imposed by the law under certain cir- cumstances, of continuing to carry on a public calling. It is undoubtedly true - and allusion is made to it in the opinion in Munn v. Illinois 2 -that where a public right in property or to service arises from a voluntary holding out of the property or the service to the public, it may ordinarily be terminated by a with- drawal of the offer of public use. One who owns a hotel may go out of the hotel business and use the building for his private dwelling; or a wagoner who is a common carrier may cease to be a common carrier, and resume exclusive use of his vehicles for his domestic purposes. This rule is, however, obviously subject to the qualification that one cannot abruptly, and without reasonable opportunity to the public to change their own affairs accordingly, so terminate his relations with the public. For example, an innkeeper could not lawfully put a sudden end to his business in the middle of a winter night, nor a common carrier suddenly leave his occupation and abandon his passengers or freight by the roadside; and it would seem to be true that the character of property, in a given instance, may be such, or the dealings with the public may have become of such character and so intricate, that it may not be pos- sible for a very long period, and perhaps may not be possible at all, to withdraw the property from the public right. 1 In a pamphlet entitled The Coal Mines and the Public, published by the J. B. Millet Co., Boston, and an article entitled A Word More about the Coal Mines in the Green Bag for December, igo2. 2 94 U. S. 113.

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