Suchergebnisse

In the 1934 term, the Supreme Court came to grips with some of the major constitutional problems of the New Deal and rendered decisions more intimately affecting our national life than any since the Dred Scott case of 1857. The great slavery decision rocked the nation to its foundations by its futile attempt to solve a problem insoluble by any means save war. The important constitutional decisions of the Reconstruction period in their immediate consequences affected mainly the South, and it will be remembered that by a series of side-steppings, some involuntary and some not, the Supreme Court escaped the necessity of passing squarely upon the validity of the basic program of Reconstruction as embodied in the act of 1867. Forty years ago, in its 1894 term, the Court incurred much unpopularity by three decisions of major significance. It invalidated the Income Tax Act passed in fulfillment of Democratic campaign pledges; it emasculated, temporarily at least, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act by holding it inapplicable to a most obvious and vicious monopoly—the sugar trust; and it incurred the hostility of organized labor by sustaining the issuance by a federal court of a labor injunction. None of these decisions was, however, nor were all of them together, as far-reaching in significance as those handed down in the last term of Court.

Following the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, the state of Ohio authorized by statute the creation of a state liquor monopoly, purchased $4,500,000 worth of liquor, and perfected plans for the retailing of it through 187 stores owned and managed by the state. In Ohio v. Helvering, the state sought an injunction to restrain the commissioner of internal revenue from collecting from the state the customary federal excise taxes upon the sale of intoxicating liquors. It alleged the immunity of the state and its instrumentalities from federal taxation and further claimed that the federal taxing statutes were not intended by Congress to apply to the states. The court, speaking through Mr. Justice Sutherland, upheld the collection of the tax, reaffirming the doctrine laid down in 1905 in the South Carolina Dispensary Case. The immunity from federal taxation enjoyed by the states extends only to those agencies and functions which are governmental in character and not to those which are proprietary. "When a state enters the market place seeking customers, it divests itself of its quasi-sovereignty pro tanto, and takes on the character of a trader, so far, at least, as the taxing power of the federal government is concerned." The Court rejected as "altogether fanciful" the argument that the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment and its later repeal had so altered the status of the liquor traffic that its conduct by the state has become an exercise of the state's police power, and hence a governmental operation immune from federal taxation.

One of the best known members of the bench in the United States raised the query whether constitutional law was not becoming so textual and so formal in its applications that it was losing touch with the realities of life. For the operations of government to be "cabined and confined" under ordinary circumstances raises difficulties not readily surmounted; but in times of unusual stress, either constitutional limitations unduly restrict urgent and necessary action or they must be ignored to permit emergency measures. A resumé of the decisions of state and federal courts affecting state constitutions for the year 1932–33 indicates the tendency both toward undue formality in interpretation and toward the warping of the constitutional mold to sanction ways and means of dealing with extraordinary conditions. Law, like life, is a matter of growth, and, as Lord Bryce long since observed, under written constitutions ways of growth must be found either within or without the provisions of fundamental laws.

There is a kernel of truth in Chief Justice Hughes' remark that "we are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is." To realize its full significance, "constitution" must be written in the plural. We have forty-nine courts of last resort, each interpreting the fundamental law of its own jurisdiction. The essential similarity of our state constitutions, and of our state bills of rights to that of the national constitution, together with the tendency of common law courts to follow each other's decisions, lend an element of stability to American state constitutional law that otherwise would be lacking. At the same time, even within so short a period as a year, the interplay of personalities may be seen moulding new doctrines in particular jurisdictions, which doctrines take on added significance because of the realization that they may, in time, serve as a basis for redirecting the course of constitutional development in other jurisdictions as well.

Law as it is made by the courts, interstitially as suggested by Mr. Justice Holmes, and interpreted in the cases that arise during a year, covers only a portion of the law-making process of the American states. Judicial interpretation and judicial legislation are determined largely by the types of controversies which arise involving the interpretation and application of constitutions and laws, and by the personnel of the courts before whom the issues are litigated. It is difficult to discover the tendencies or trends which are in the molding during a decade or more of legal history; for such a short term as a year, generalizations or conclusions may be attempted only with great caution and with well understood reservations.The significant decisions affecting state constitutional law in 1931-32 in the state supreme courts or courts of appeal and in the inferior federal courts may conveniently be grouped under the following headings: (1) the separation and delegation of powers; (2) the protection of civil rights; (3) due process of law and equal protection of the laws; (4) due process and public utility regulations; (5) due process and the police power; (6) taxation; and (7) miscellaneous decisions.

The most significant case in the field of state constitutional law decided during the past year is that of State ex rel. Miller v. Hinkle, decided by the supreme court of Washington in 1930. This case held that an apportionment act is a "law," and can be popularly initiated under the initiative and referendum provisions of the constitution of the state of Washington. The court granted a petition for a writ of mandamus to compel the secretary of state to accept a petition submitting to popular referendum a proposal to redistrict the state for purposes of representation in the legislature. The legislature had failed for many years to perform its constitutional duty to reapportion the state, and this case illustrates the most conclusive argument in favor of the use of the initiative and referendum for purposes of ordinary legislation, even though the only legislation to which it be applied be that of reapportionment. Many states are faced with a serious problem in connection with over-representation of rural districts in the legislature and under-representation of urban districts. The initiative and referendum seem to offer about the only way out of the difficulty if state legislatures refuse to correct the inequality. The only alternative is that we change our ideas as to the necessity of majority rule in the selection and composition of legislative bodies, a change which the rural districts appear already to have made.

The invalidation and consequent abandonment of the N.I.R.A. did not bring to an end the trends of which it was, in fact, merely a manifestation rather than a cause. Section 7a had its precursors in the Railway Labor Act of 1926, the Norris Anti-Injunction Act of 1932, and similar state laws, and has been carried over in the National Labor Relations Act. The price maintenance provisions of the codes were the result of years of effort on the part of the American Fair Trade League to legalize resale price maintenance contracts. Today, various state Fair Trade Acts go much farther than the codes dared to go in establishing resale price maintenance even apart from privity of contract. Trade associations have continued their efforts to "rationalize" industry through the collection of statistics on capacity, production, sales, and prices, trusting that the courts will permit this to be done through a more liberal interpretation of the anti-trust laws. Pending further national legislation to be built upon the broader interpretation of the commerce power enunciated in the Labor Relations Act decisions, business efforts to set minimum prices have been carried on under a mantle of state and local legislation. Various trades and professions, desiring to carry forward their efforts to standardize minimum working conditions and professional practices in their fields, have also sought the aid of the states and of their local governments. Consequently, much of the work of the state courts during the year 1936–37 concerned the validity of these undertakings. There was also the normal run of cases in the various fields of state constitutional law. As last year (see this Review, Aug., 1936, pp. 692–712), the decisions will be discussed under the following headings: (1) separation and delegation of powers; (2) inter-governmental relations; (3) individual rights: procedural; (4) individual rights: substantive; and (5) fiscal powers. However, the nature of the material has necessitated a complete rearrangement of the subject-matter within each heading.

More than ten years ago, the Earl of Birkenhead, former Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, speaking before the American Bar Association, expressed the belief that it was a question for the future to determine whether the barriers which the framers of the constitutions placed upon the complete freedom of legislative assemblies in the United States will prove equal to the emergencies as they arise and will be as adaptable to the stress and strain of political exigencies as the more flexible and more democratic arrangements of the British constitution. "Your constitution," he remarked, "is expressed and defined in documents which can be pronounced upon by the Supreme Court. In this sense, your judges are the masters of your executive. Your constitution is a cast-iron document. It falls to be construed by the Supreme Court with the same sense of easy and admitted mastery as any ordinary contract. This circumstance provides a breakwater of enormous value against ill-considered and revolutionary changes." On the other hand, so far as England is concerned, the genius of the Anglo-Saxon people has, rightly or wrongly, refused to shackle in the slightest degree the constitutional competence of later generations. Any law of Great Britain can be altered by Parliament and no court may challenge the constitutional force of an act of Parliament. It is on the whole premature, thought Lord Birkenhead, to decide whether you or we have been right.

During the past year, the state appellate courts have reviewed state legislation with a degree of restraint more marked than in the preceding year. The present attitude of the courts toward the work of legislatures may be in part the result of a change in court personnel. It is also both possible and probable that judges have been impressed by the more tolerant or liberal attitude of the United States Supreme Court. Finally, a few of the judges may have become aware of the fact that the times demand the relinquishment of an assumed judicial "supremacy" and the examination of legislative and administrative action under specific constitutional provisions in the light of social and economic realities. At all events, judicial review in the grand manner has given way to a more vigorous application of technical constitutional requirements. Courts are tending to emphasize procedure rather than substance; review appears to be at once more tolerant and more precise; decisions turn on narrower grounds, premises are less sweeping. When applied to state constitutions, this tendency means something quite different from what it means when applied to the national constitution.This tendency may perhaps be regarded as charged with possible evil results for the courts. Although state constitutions are, in most cases, so detailed and diverse that no actual diminution of the courts' discretionary powers need result, and although to a successful litigant it makes little difference whether a statute is invalidated for want of due process or for want of a proper title or enacting clause, it is difficult to conceive of many things that will bring the courts more quickly into popular disrepute than an exaggeration of constitutional technicalities.

State courts determine, in the absence of constitutional provision to the contrary, whether amendments to state constitutions have been proposed and adopted in the manner provided for these constitutions. Not every minor deviation from the course of action marked out in the constitution for its amendment is deemed sufficient to justify the court in declaring that the amendment has been "unconstitutionally adopted," but whether these deviations are serious enough to warrant such a declaration is a question to be determined by the courts themselves. Statutes supplementing constitutional provisions on the subject of amendment are valid if not in conflict with the constitutional provisions themselves, and substantial compliance with these rules is also required by the courts. Sometimes the provisions regulating the subject of publication of proposed amendments are constitutional; at other times they are statutory. In either case, publication in the manner provided for, and for the period of time provided for, is necessary to the validity of the amendment. Publication for two weeks, when the period should have been four weeks, was deemed sufficient by the Nebraska court to invalidate the amendment involved.

Validity of Constitutional Amendments. The courts continue to scan with rather meticulous care the procedure for the adoption of constitutional amendments. Where the sole purpose of a proposed constitutional amendment under the initiative provisions of the constitution was to provide for the levy of a "syncrotax," or a tax on the basis of gross receipts in lieu of all other state taxes, a petition with a short title reading "initiative measure providing for adoption of gross receipts act" was held fatally defective in view of the requirement that every initiative petition have a short title showing the nature of the petition and the subject to which it relates. But according to the supreme court of Florida, a proposal to amend the constitution need not have a title, need not be read on different days or at different times, and need not be concurred in by the governor. And the dissenting justices protested that the majority failed to uphold the requirement that a proposed amendment shall be entered upon the respective journals of the two houses with the yeas and nays, showing a three-fifths vote in favor of the amendment. There must be, however, a violation of express constitutional requirements for the courts to interfere with the procedure in the adoption of amendments.

Delegation of Legislative Power: To the Federal Government. The rapidly growing practice of making state agencies which administer social security laws responsible for bringing them into and keeping them in conformity with the federal Social Security Act came under review by the Washington supreme court. Immediately following adoption of the Senior Citizens Grants Act as an initiative measure in November, 1940, the federal Social Security Board began withholding the matching funds on the ground that the flat exemption of specified items of an applicant's income and resources failed to comply with the requirements of the national act. After three and a half months, the state administrators yielded to the persuasion of the Social Security Board and issued rules which in effect nullified the federally objectionable features, and at the same time detailed how the items formerly exempted were to be considered. A divided court sustained both the rules and the law. The majority concluded that the Washington law was intended to be construed in harmony with the federal act, as that act is amended and interpreted by its administrators. Accordingly, they viewed and approved the delegation chiefly as one which authorized the local administrators to declare certain portions of the act inoperative if they found them in conflict with the federal law. The situation was declared to be one in which "the Legislature enacted a statute under which the executive determines some fact or status upon the existence of which the operation of the statute is to depend." This theory, of course, makes the function more judicial than legislative, as was pointed out in the dissenting opinion. But the theory completely ignores the fact that, after suspending the proscribed sections, the state administrators wrote their own set of definitions and rules, which were then instituted as a budgetary system.