common carrier

noun

1. Transportation. (in federal regulatory and other legal usage) a carrier offering its services at published rates to all persons for interstate transportation.
2. a public service or public utility company, as a telephone or telegraph company, engaged in the transmitting of messages for the public.

common carrier

noun

1. a person or firm engaged in the business of transporting goods or passengers

common carrier

1. A company or individual providing public transportation on a regular basis in return for a fee that is uniformly charged to all users.

Other Words From

• common-carri·er adjective
• common carriage noun

Example Sentences

“It would undercut safety and be the opposite of good business, the opposite of fulfilling the common carrier obligation, and the opposite of meeting the congressional commandment to serve the public.”

From Seattle Times

In an amicus brief in the cases that I filed with political scientist Brendan Nyhan and journalism professor Amy Wilentz and co-authored with Nat Bach and his team at Manatt Phelps, we argue that the common carrier argument is a weak one.

From Slate

As professor Eugene Volokh, one of the originators of the common carrier analogy, explains, what separates entities such as newspapers from entities such as phone companies is whether they produce a “coherent speech product.”

From Slate

There’s also a huge irony in seeing people like Volokh or Justice Clarence Thomas express support for the common carrier theory and requiring private companies to carry speech they may disagree with or even find dangerous.

From Slate

One section of the statute makes it a federal crime to send, through the mail or any common carrier, “every article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing abortion.”

From Slate