Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar

“ Justice SWAYNE, delivering the opinion of the court, said: 'A patentable invention is a mental result. It must be new, and shown to be of practical utility. Everything within the domain of the conception belongs to him who conceived it. The machine, process, or product is but its material reflex and embodiment. A new idea may be ingrafted upon an old invention, be distinct from the conception which preceded it, and be an improvement. ”

“ No distinction is more popular to the common mind, or more clearly expressed in economic and political literature, than that between manufactures and commerce. Manufacture is transformation-the fashioning of raw materials into a change of form for use. The functions of commerce are different. The buying and selling and the transportation incidental thereto constitute commerce; and the regulation of commerce in the constitutional sense embraces the regulation at least of such transportation. ”

“ Then the will, it may be the unbridled will, of the judge, would usurp the place of the constitution and the laws, and the violation of one provision is liable to speedily become a precedent for another, perhaps more flagrant, until all constitutional and legal barriers are destroyed, and none are secure in their rights. Nor are we justified in resorting to strained construction or astute interpretation, to avoid the intention of the framers of the constitution, or the statutes adopted under it, even to relieve against individual or local hardships. ”

“ There is no fixed standard in the law by which a court is enabled to arbitrarily say in every case what conduct shall be considered reasonable and prudent, and what shall constitute ordinary care, under any and all circumstances. The terms 'ordinary care,' 'reasonable prudence,' and such like terms, as applied to the conduct and affairs of men, have a relative significance, and cannot be arbitrarily defined. What may be deemed ordinary care in one case may, under different surroundings and circumstances, be gross negligence. ”

“ The great question of protection to contract rights and vested interests, which forms such an interesting and important feature of our constitutional law, is not dominated by the turn of a phrase. Our courts, both state and national, look on these questions through the form to the substance of things; and, in substance, a statute under which one takes office, and which fixes the term of office at one year, or during good behavior, is the same as one which adds to those provisions the declaration that the incumbent shall not be dismissed therefrom. ”

“ The law is that the plaintiff must show negligence in the defendant. This is done prima facie by showing, if the plaintiff be a passenger, that the accident occurred. If that accident was in fact the result of causes beyond the defendant's responsibility, or of the act of God, it is still none the less true that the plaintiff has made out his prima facie case. When he proves the occurrence of the accident the defendant must answer that case from all the circumstances of exculpation, whether disclosed by the one party or the other. They are its matter of defense. ”

“ The principle that the United States are not bound by any statute of limitations, nor barred by any laches of their officers, however gross, in a suit brought by them as a sovereign government to enforce a public right, or to assert a public interest, is extablished past all controversy or doubt. ”

“ Justice GRAY: 'The property of a corporation is doubtless a trust fund for the payment of its debts, in the sense that when the corporation is lawfully dissolved and all its business wound up, or when it is insolvent, all its creditors are entitled in equity to have their debts paid out of the corporate property before any distribution thereof among the stockholders. ”

“ That the burden of proof is upon the defendant in this case,-that is, the obligation is upon it to prove the facts relied upon by it as a defense. The plaintiff is not called upon to prove that these facts did not exist. It is its duty to present to you evidence which is to satisfy your mind. Such evidence need not be so convincing as to make the effect beyond reasonable doubt, but the weight of the testimony must decidedly preponderate on the side of the defendant. ”

“ It is well settled that no action can be maintained in any federal court by the citizens of one of the states against a state, without its consent, even though the sole object of such suit be to bring the state within the operation of the constitutional provision which provides that 'no state shall pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts.' This immunity of a state from suit is absolute and unqualified, and the constitutional provision securing it is not to be so construed as to place the state within the reach of the process of the court. ”

“ Apply these principles to the contract between Starr and Mrs. Brown, and what will be the result? It was not even claimed that there was any express stipulation between the parties that time should be of the essence of the contract; nor, on the other hand, that such obligation arose from the nature of the property or the awowed object of the seller.
It is asserted that there was an understanding that Starr should have no right or title to the land, or the right to any conveyance of the land, until the full purchase price should be paid. But that is a very different proposition. ”

“ The fact of intercourse and traffic, again, embraces all the means, instruments, and places by and in which intercourse and traffic are carried on, and, further still, comprehends the act of carrying them on at these places, and by and with these means. The subject-matter of intercourse or traffic may be either things, goods, chattels, merchandise, or persons. ”

“ The powers which are conferred are organic powers. We look to the act itself for their extent and limitations. It is not one act in a series of legislation, and to be made to fit into the provisions of the prior legislation, but is a single complete act, the outcome of previous experiments, and the final judgment of congress as to the system of government which should obtain. ”

“ It is clear that any secret bargain by which one of these creditors obtains more than he composition deed gives, and more than he agrees under it to take, violates the equality which is the basis of the deed of settlement, and operates a gross fraud upon the creditors,-a fraud which the law, in its policy of precaution rather than by mere remedial justice, suppresses by depriving the parties of the fruit of their clandestine arrangements. ”

“ A rule apparently fair on its face and reasonable in its terms may, in fact, be unfair and unreasonable if it operates so as to give one an advantage of which another, similarly situated, cannot avail himself. ”

“ The assignments of error may all be reduced to one proposition, viz.: The findings of the court upon the facts in the case do not support the judgment. To support the judgment it is only necessary that the findings should show possession by the defendants, and title and right of possession in the plaintiff. There is no question but that they show that the defendants were in possession of the premises at the time the suit was commenced. There is no privity between the parties to the suit, and the only question for consideration, therefore, relates to the title the plaintiff has to the property. ”

“ It is familiar law that in a proper case the filing of a petition for removal, accompanied by a proper and legal bond, operates of itself to remove a case from the state court to the United States court. ”

“ We regard as alike unsound and dangerous the doctrine that a public or municipal corporation possesses the implied power to borrow money for its ordinary purposes, and, incidental to that, the power to issue commercial securities. ”

“ It is a well-settled principle that when lands are granted according to an official plat of the survey of such lands, the plat itself, with all its notes, lines, descriptions, and land-marks, becomes as much a part of the grant or deed by which they are conveyed, and controls, so far as limits are concerned, as if such descriptive features were written out upon the face of the deed or the grant itself. ”

“ These authorities establish the principle that the holder of one or more of a series of notes secured by a concurrent mortgage is entitled to a pro rata share in the net proceeds arising from the sale of the mortgaged property at the suit of a holder of any of the other notes, and that an hypothecary action lies to enforce such claim. And one of them, Johnson v. Duncan, lays down the principle that, as regards the purchaser at the foreclosure sale, no reinscription of the mortgage is necessary, because he has assumed, by his purchase, the payment of the proportionate share of the debt. ”

“ It is a well-settled rule of law that the power to make and correct surveys of the public lands belongs exclusively to the political department of the government, and that the action of that department, within the scope of its authority, is unassailable in the courts except by a direct proceeding. ”

“ We find no authority for the idea that it is the province of a court of equity to make a fraudulent debtor the special object of its favor because he has not received a large enough consideration for his 'confessed fraud.' That court is not a divider of the inheritance of iniquity between the respective heirs of two confederates in fraud. ”

“ Whether the railroad acquired a cause of action against the township by the failure to deliver the bonds, or by their cancellation prior to the lapse of the three years fixed by the statute, on the one hand, or the whole project was a mere fiasco, on the other, and, if such cause of action arose, what was its precise nature and form, are matters rather of curious speculation than of practical consequence. If no real cause of action arose, that is the end of the matter. ”