James Clark McReynolds

“ There is a distinction between imposing a burden and withholding a favor. By the Constitution or by contract the holders of tax-exempt securities are protected from burdens; but from neither source do they derive an affirmative claim to favors. If Congress voted to subsidize all insurance companies except those holding tax-exempt bonds, whatever other objections might be made to such a course, I do not think petitioner could complain because it had not been made the recipient of a gift. ”

“ Mere acquisition by one corporation of a majority of the stock or all the assets of another corporation does not of itself constitute a reorganization, where such acquisition takes the form of a purchase and sale and does not result in or bear some material resemblance to a merger or consolidation.'
True, the mere acquisition of the assets of one corporation by another does not amount to reorganization within the statutory definition. ”

“ We of course agree that if a trial is in fact dominated by a mob, so that the jury is intimidated and the trial judge yields, and so that there is an actual interference with the course from due process of law in the proper sense of that term. And if the State, supplying no corrective process, carries into execution a judgment of death or imprisonment based upon a verdict thus produced by mob domination, the State deprives the accused of his life of liberty without due process of law. ”

“ A contract is an agreement in which a party undertakes to do, or not to do, a particular thing. The law binds him to perform his undertaking, and this is, of course, the obligation of his contract. * * * Any law which releases a part of this obligation must, in the literal sense of the word, impair it. * * * But it is not true that the parties have in view only the property in possession when the contract is formed, or that its obligation does not extend to future acquisitions. Industry, talents, and integrity constitute a fund which is as confidently trusted as property itself. ”

“ If the time were six months instead of six years I hardly think that the power of the State to pass the law would be denied, as the difficulty of proof would warrant making the presumption absolute; and while I should not dream of asking where the line can be drawn, since the great body of the law consists in drawing such lines, yet when you realize that you are dealing with a matter of degree you must realize that reasonable men may differ widely as to the place where the line should fall. ”

“ Can the refusal by a manufacturer to sell his product to a jobber or retailer, except upon condition that the purchaser will buy from him also his trade requirements in another article or articles, reasonably be found by the commission to be an unfair method of competition under the circumstances set forth in the findings of fact? If we were called upon to consider the sufficiency of the complaint, and that merely, the question for our decision would be, whether the particular practice could, under any circumstances, reasonably be deemed an unfair method of competition. ”

“ I dissent from the opinion of the court because I agree with the three New York courts that the undisputed facts thus stated show that the transportation was ended and the delivery of the stock was so completely made as to end all liability of the carrier under the bill of lading, before the negligence of the company occurred which caused the damage complained of.
What constitutes delivery of goods or of live stock by a carrier is usually a mixed question of law and fact, but where, as here, the facts are not disputed, it is a question of law. ”

“ When we speak of the jurisdiction to tax land or a chattel as being exclusively in the state where it is located, we mean no more than that, in the ordinary case of ownership of tangible property, the legal interests of ownership enjoy the benefit and protection of the laws of that state alone, and that it alone can effectively reach the interests protected for the purpose of subjecting them to the payment of the tax. ”

“ Why then cannot a state tax a patent by a tax that in no way discriminates against it? Obviously it is not true that patents are instrumentalities of the government. They are used by the patentees for their private advantage alone. If the government uses them, it must pay like other people. ”

“ The refusal of the time in which to prepare for trial, and the consequent forcing of the defendant to his defense on the instant, is, under the provisions of our law, equivalent, in our judgment, to a refusal of a legal hearing. It amounts in effect to a denial of a trial. It is an abrogation of that due process of law which is the country's embodied procedure, without which a defendant has, in law, no trial at law. . . . Nobody has denied the initial jurisdiction of the trial court. ”

“ We said, 'The mere fact that a citizen may be within the limits of a particular state does not prevent his making a contract outside its limits while he himself remains within it,' and ruled that under the Fourteenth Amendment the right to contract outside for insurance on property within a state is one which cannot be taken away by state legislation. So to contract is a part of the liberty guaranteed to every citizen. ”

“ The power to declare laws of states unconstitutional and to reverse the judgments of the Supreme Courts of states is so fateful and is so unprecedented in the history of governments other than ours that, as this court has repeatedly declared, it should be exercised only in cases which are clear, and it is impossible for me to think that this is such a case. ”

“ I freely concede the authority of Congress to modify the rules of maritime law so far as they are administered in the Federal courts, and to make them binding upon the courts of the states so far as they affect interstate or international relations, or regulate 'commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.' What I contend is that the Constitution does not, proprio vigore, impose the maritime law upon the states except to the extent that the admiralty jurisdiction was exclusive of the courts of common law before the Constitution ”

“ The words 'unfair method of competition' are not defined by the statute and their exact meaning is in dispute. It is for the courts, not the commission, ultimately to determine as matter of law what they include. They are clearly inapplicable to practices never heretofore regarded as opposed to good morals because characterized by deception, bad faith, fraud, or oppression, or as against public policy because of their dangerous tendency unduly to hinder competition or create monopoly. ”

“ It has failed to afford adequate protection either to capital or to the public. It leaves open the door to grave injustice. To give to capital embarked in public utilities the protection guaranteed by the Constitution, and to secure for the public reasonable rates, it is essential that the rate base be definite, stable, and readily ascertainable, and that the percentage to be earned on the rate base be measured by the cost, or charge, of the capital employed in the enterprise. ”

“ Without the remedy the contract may, indeed, in the sense of the law, be said not to exist, and its obligation to fall within the class of those moral and social duties which depend for their fulfillment wholly upon the will of the individual. The ideas of validity and remedy are inseparable, and both are parts of the obligation, which is guaranteed by the Constitution against invasion. The obligation of a contract 'is the law which binds the parties to perform their agreement.' The prohibition has no reference to the degree of impairment. The largest and least are alike forbidden. ”

“ Taxation is a practical matter, and if, in the choice of the rule we adopt, we may, as the Court has said in Farmers' Loan & Trust Company v. Minnesota, give some consideration to its practical effect, we ought not, I think, to overturn long-established rules governing the constitutional power to tax, without some consideration of the necessity and of all consequences of the change. ”

“ Perhaps the most common cause of the lessening of service value of parts of railroad plants originally well conceived and still in good physical condition is the progress in the art of rail transportation. Science and invention have wrought since June 30, 1914, such extraordinary improvements in the types of automobiles and aeroplanes that no one would contend that the present service value of such machines should be ascertained by inquiring what their original cost was or what their reproduction cost would be. ”

“ We can find no substantial basis for the charge of discrimination against legitimate interstate commerce. That any real burden upon commerce which the State is not free to inhibit will result from the challenged statute seems impossible.
There is no suggestion of conflict with a federal enactment. The mere power of the Federal Government to regulate interstate commerce does not disable the States from adopting reasonable measures designed to secure the health and comfort of their people. The statute under consideration is an effort to discharge an obligation to the public ”

“ But it means to us that a claimant must prove, in order to satisfy that condition, that he made a reasonable investigation to ascertain if the purchaser was a mere straw man acting for another or was a legitimate purchaser in his own right. The words 'if it appears' carry that connotation. A contrary construction defeats the purpose of the Congress by placing an enormous premium on lack of diligence. That construction opens wide the doors to defraud the revenue, for finance companies need lift no finger nor make any effort to ascertain the existence of a straw man purchaser. ”

“ A debt is a legal relation between two parties and, if we think of facts, is situated at least as much with the debtor against whom the obligation must be enforced as it is with the creditor. To say that a debt has a situs with the creditor is merely to clothe a foregone conclusion with a fiction. The place of the property is not material except where inability to protect carries with it inability to tax. ”

“ Not love, not sorrow, not mental anguish, not sentiment, but loss in money 'as the direct result of the death,' and beyond that money loss 'it not being permissible for the jury to go.' The standard, then, is money loss, or, to use the court's words, 'the pecuniary injury suffered.' No prompting to or excuse for impulse or passion was given, nor was imagination left any sway. The judgment of the jury was brought and held to the money value of the life destroyed to wife and children dependent upon it. ”

“ It is also true, I think, that justice demands that the utility company should profit in some substantial proportion by the economies brought about by its ability in management or its improvements in methods of manufacture. There is no good reason why the consumers should get all the advantages that are the fruit of the genius of these inventors. If by the terms of their employment Mr. Jones and his son had been bound to assign their patents to plaintiff without further compensation, and had done so, the city could not justly claim that the company should have no part of the savings effected. ”

“ We further think it clearly follows from our numerous decisions upholding prohibition legislation that the right to hold intoxicating liquors for personal use is not one of those fundamental privileges of a citizen of the United States which no state may abridge. A contrary view would be incompatible with the undoubted power to prevent manufacture, gift, sale, purchase or transportation of such articles-the only feasible ways of getting them. An assured right of possession would necessarily imply some adequate method to obtain not subject to destruction at the will of the state. ”

“ It should not be forgotten that, exercising inherent police power, the state may suppress whatever evils may be incident to primary or convention. As 'each house shall be the judge of the elections, qualifications and returns of its own members,' and as Congress may by law regulate the times, places and manner of holding elections, the national government is not without power to protect itself against corruption, fraud or other malign influences. ”

“ And if it be now ruled that one dedicates his property to public use whenever he embarks on an enterprise which the Legislature may think it desirable to bring under control, this is but to declare that rights guaranteed by the Constitution exist only so long as supposed public interest does not require their extinction. To adopt such a view, of course, would put an end to liberty under the Constitution. ”

“ In the absence of a purpose to monopolize, or the compulsion that results from contract or agreement, the individual certainly may exercise great freedom; but concerted action through combination presents a wholly different problem, and is forbidden when the necessary tendency is to destroy the kind of competition to which the public has long looked for protection. The situation here questioned is wholly unlike an exchange, where dealers assemble and buy and sell openly, and the ordinary practice of reporting statistics to collectors stops far short of the practice which defendants adopted. ”

“ Hitherto the fact that taxation is 'double' has not been deemed to affect its constitutionality, and there are, I think, too many situations in which a single economic interest may have such legal relationships with different taxing jurisdictions as to justify its taxation in both to admit of our laying down any constitutional principle broadly prohibiting taxation merely because it is double, at least until that characterization is more precisely defined. ”