Gambar halaman
PDF
ePub

Discussion of what is an "unreasonable search and seizure " within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Historical review of statutes relating to search and seizure, Lord Camden's opinion in Entick v. Carrington, 19 How. St. Trials, 1029, quoted from at length. "The principles laid down in this opinion affect the very essence of constitutional liberty and security. . . . Any forcible and compulsory extortion of a man's own testimony or of his private papers to be used as evidence to convict him of crime or to forfeit his goods, is within the condemnation of that judgment. In this regard the Fourth and Fifth Amendments run almost into each other."

"We have been unable to perceive that the seizure of a man's private books and papers to be used in evidence against him is substantially different from compelling him to be a witness against himself."

"As, therefore, suits for penalties and forfeitures incurred by the commission of offences against the law are of this quasi-criminal nature, we think that they are within the reason of criminal proceedings for all the purposes of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, and of that portion of the Fifth Amendment which declares that no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself; and we are further of opinion that a compulsory production of the books and papers of the owner of goods sought to be forfeited in such a suit is compelling him to be a witness against himself, within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, and is the equivalent of a search and seizure, and an unreasonable search and seizure, within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment."

The decisions sustaining this act and the prior ones of 1863 and 1867 are Stockwell v. United States, 3 Cliff. 284; In re Platt & Boyd, 7 Ben. 261; U. S. v. Hughes, 12 Blatchf. 553; U. S. v. Mason, 6 Bissell, 350; U. S. v. Three Tons of Coal, 6 Bissell, 379; U. S. v. Distillery No. 28, 6 Bissell, 483, examined.

"We find nothing in the decisions to change our views in relation to the principal question at issue." Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616.

-

JUDICIAL PROCEEDINGS OF OTHER STATES. A judgment of a state court, in a cause within its jurisdiction, and against a defendant lawfully summoned, or against lawfully attached property of an absent defendant, is entitled to as much force and effect against the person summoned or the property attached, when the question is presented for decision in a court of another state, as it has in the

state in which it was rendered. Maxwell v. Stuart, 22 Wall. 77 ; Ins. Co. v. Harris, 97 U. S. 331; Green v. Van Buskirk, 7 Wall. 139; Cooper v. Reynolds, 10 Wall. 308.- Hanley v. Donoghue, 116 U. S. 1, and Renaud v. Abbott, 116 Ibid. 277.

[ocr errors]

IMPAIRING OBLIGATION OF CONTRACTS. "We do not assert the proposition that a person elected to an office for a definite term has any such contract with the government or with the appointing body as to prevent the legislature or other proper authority from abolishing the office or diminishing its duration or removing him from office. So, though when appointed the law has provided a fixed compensation for his services, there is no contract which forbids the legislature or other proper authority to change the rate of compensation for salary or services after the change is made, though this may include a part of the term of the office then unexpired. Butler v. Pennsylvania, 10 How. 402.

"But, after the services have been rendered, under a law, resolution, or ordinance which fixes the rate of compensation, there arises an implied contract to pay for those services at that rate. This contract is a completed contract. Its obligation is perfect, and rests on the remedies which the law then gives for its enforcement. The vice of the argument of the Supreme Court of Louisiana is in limiting the protecting power of the constitutional provision against impairing the obligation of contracts to express contracts, to specific agreements, and in rejecting that much larger class in which one party having delivered property, paid money, rendered service, or suffered loss, at the request of or for the use of another, the law completes the contract by implying an obligation on the part of the latter to make compensation. This obligation can no more be impaired by the law of the state than that arising on a promissory note."

The appointment of Fisk as district attorney was lawful, and was a request made to him by the proper authority to render the services demanded. He did render the services, and the obligation to pay was complete. The measure of compensation was also fixed by the previous order of the police jury. There was here wanting no element of a contract.

The provision of the Constitution restricting the limit of taxation, so far as it was in conflict with the Act of 1871, and as applied to the contract of the plaintiff, impaired its obligation by destroying the remedy pro tanto

It is well settled that a provision in a state constitution may be

a law impairing the obligation of a contract as well as one found in an ordinary statute. Von Hoffman v. Quincy, 4 Wall. 535; Nelson v. St. Martin's Parish, 111 U. S. 716. Fisk v. Jefferson Police Jury, 116 U. S. 131.

EXPORTS-TAXES.

[ocr errors]

The tax or excise required on tobacco intended for exportation is constitutional; Pace v. Burgess, 92 U. S. 372, affirmed. The decision in Coe v. Errol, 116 U. S. 517, stated and explained. Turpin v. Burgess, 117 U. S. 504.

[ocr errors]

Ex parte

INFAMOUS PUNISHMENT — FIFTH AMENDMENT. Wilson, 114 U. S. 417, affirmed. "A crime punishable by imprisonment for a term of years at hard labor is an infamous punishment, within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment." Reasons for that judgment summed up. "Of the two kinds of infamy known to the law of England before the Declaration of Independence, the Constitutional Amendment looked to the one founded on the opinions of the people respecting the mode of punishment, rather than to that founded on the construction of the law respecting the future credibility of the delinquent."

The argument by which the soundness of those conclusions has been now impugned is the same as the one submitted then, and has not convinced us that there was any error in the decision. Hurtado v. California, 110 U. S. 516, and United States v. Waddell, 112 U. S. 76, explained.

"We cannot doubt that at the present day imprisonment in a state prison or penitentiary, with or without hard labor, is an infamous punishment."

But the most conclusive evidence of the opinion of Congress upon this subject is to be found in the Act of June 17, 1870, c. 133, § 1, where "infamous crimes " are in the most explicit words defined to be those "punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary."— Mackin v. United States, 117 U. S. 348.

TAXATION OF UNITED STATES PROPERTY. - By the Constitution of the United States, property of the United States is exempt from taxation under the authority of a state.

"Even in the courts of the several states the decided and increasing preponderance of authority is in favor of the absolute exemption of all property of the United States from state taxation." The doctrine has been recognized by the highest courts of Illinois, California, and Kansas, Virginia, Connecticut, Iowa, and Wisconsin. The legislatures of most of the states have affirmed the same principle by inserting in their general tax acts an exemption of property belong

ing to the United States. Coe v. Errol, 116 U. S. 517, 524. The subject is exhaustively discussed by Mr. Justice Gray.- Van Brocklin v. State of Tennessee, 117 U. S. 151.

ELEVENTH AMENDMENT SUITS AGAINST A STATE.

Marye v. Parsons, 114 U. S. 325, and Williams v. Hagood, 98 U. S. 72, affirmed. Louisiana v. Jumel, 107 U. S. 711, affirmed and applied. The principle of these cases distinguished from that of Osborn v. Bank of United States, 9 Wheat. 738; Board of Liquidation v. McComb, 92 U. S. 531; Allen v. B. & O. R. R. 114 U. S. 311.

“A broad line of demarcation separates from such cases as the present, in which the decrees require, by affirmative official action on the part of the defendants, the performance of an obligation which belongs to the state in its political capacity, those in which actions at law or suits in equity are maintained against defendants who, while claiming to act as officers of the state, violate and invade the personal and property rights of the plaintiffs, under color of authority, unconstitutional and void." Of such cases that of United States v. Lee, 106 U. S. 196, is a conspicuous example. See, also, Poindexter v. Greenhow, 114 U. S. 270; Allen v. B. & O. R. R. 114 U. S. 311.- Hagood v. Southern, 117 U. S. 52.

"When a suit is brought in a court of the United States against officers of a state to enforce performance of a contract made by the state, and the controversy is as to the validity and obligation of the contract, and the only remedy sought is the performance of the contract by the state, and the nominal defendants have no personal interest in the subject-matter of the suit, but defend only as representing the state, the state is the real party against whom the relief is sought, and the suit is substantially within the prohibition of the Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution of the United States." Hagood v. Southern, supra.

INTER-STATE COMMERCE. Act of March 16, 1877, of Tennessee, imposed a tax of $50 per year upon every sleeping-car run over a railroad in Tennessee, and not owned by the railroad upon which it is run. Sleeping-cars owned by a Kentucky corporation were leased by it for transportation purposes to Tennessee railroad corporations, the latter receiving the transit fare, and the former the extra sum paid for sleeping accommodations.

Held, that so far as applied to inter-state transportation of passengers carried over Tennessee railroads, into, out of, or across that state, in sleeping-cars owned by the Kentucky corporation, the statute was void.

"The tax was a unit, for the privilege of the transit of the passenger and all its accessories. The service rendered the passenger was a unit. The car was equally a vehicle of transit as if it had been owned by the railroad company. As such vehicle of transit the car, so far as it was engaged in inter-state commerce, was not taxable by the State of Tennessee. Citing Almy v. California, 24 How. 169; Woodruff v. Parham, 8 Wall. 123; Crandall v. Nevada, 6 Ibid. 35; State Freight Tax Cases, 15 Ibid. 232; Head Money Cases, 112 U. S. 580; Welton v. Missouri, 91 U. S. 275, etc.

"The whole subject, in reference to a state tax imposed for selling goods brought into a state for other states, was recently fully considered by this court in Walling v. Michigan, 116 U. S. 446," and see "Brown v. Houston, 114 U. S. 622, 631, where the cases on that point are collected." Osborne v. Mobile, 16 Wall. 479, and Wiggin's Ferry Co. v. East St. Louis, 107 U. S. 365, distinguished.

Osborne was a local agent, subject to the taxing jurisdiction of the state; the tax was on the general [express] business he carried on; the subject of the tax was not, as here, the act of inter-state transportation. In Ferry Co. v. St. Louis, the tax was imposed upon a ferry keeper living in the state for boats owned and used in carrying passengers from the state across a navigable river to another state. The tax was a license fee imposed by the state in which the boats had their situs. In the case at bar the corporation had no domicil in Tennessee, and the sleeping-cars in question had no situs in that state. Pullman Southern Car Co. v. Gaines, 3 Tenn. Ch. 587 (on the same facts), differed from. Pickard v. Pullman Southern Car Co. 117 U. S. 34; affirmed in Tennessee v. Pullman Southern Car Co. 117 U. S. 51.

INDIANS. - By treaties with the Cherokees the United States have recognized them as a distinct political community, so far independent as to justify and require negotiations with them in that character. The Cherokee Trust Funds, 117 U. S. 288.

[ocr errors]

CHINESE LAUNDRY CASES. “An administration of a municipal ordinance for the carrying on of a lawful business within the corporate limits, violates the provisions of the Constitution of the United States, if it makes arbitrary and unjust discriminations, founded on differences of race, between persons otherwise in similar circumstances."

"Those subjects of the Emperor of China who have the right to temporarily or permanently reside within the United States are entitled to enjoy the protection guaranteed by the Constitution.” Opinion of Sawyer, J., Circuit Court, is in 26 Fed. Rep. 471.

« SebelumnyaLanjutkan »