Samuel Freeman Miller

“ No man in this country is so high that he is above the law. No officer of the law may set that law at defiance with impunity. All the officers of the government, from the highest to the lowest, are creatures of the law and are bound to obey it. It is the only supreme power in our system of government, and every man who by accepting office participates in its functions is only the more strongly bound to submit to that supremacy, and to observe the limitations which it imposes upon the exercise of the authority which it gives. ”

“ My property is as much imperiled by an action against me for money as it is by an action against me for my land or my goods. It may involve and sweep away all that I have in the world. Is not a right of defense to such an action of the greatest value to me? If it is not property in the sense of the constitution, then we need another amendment to that instrument. But it seems to me that there can hardly be a doubt that it is property.
The immunity from suit which arises by operation of the statute of limitations is as valuable a right as the right to bring the suit itself. ”

“ Must the court go through the idle ceremony in such a case of submitting to the jury the testimony on which plaintiff relies, when it is clear to the judicial mind that if the jury should find a verdict in favor of plaintiff that verdict would be set aside and a new trial had? Such a proposition is absurd, and accordingly we hold the true principle to be, that if the court is satisfied that, conceding all the inferences which the jury could justifiably draw from the testimony, the evidence is insufficient to warrant a verdict for the plaintiff, the court should say so to the jury. ”

“ If the government of the United States has within its constitutional domain no authority to provide against these evils,-if the very sources of power may be poisoned by corruption or controlled by violence and outrage, without legal restraint,-then, indeed, is the country in danger, and its best powers, its highest purposes, the hopes which it inspires, and the love which enshrines it, are at the mercy of the combinations of those who respect no right but brute force on the one hand, and unprincipled corruptionists on the other. ”

“ It must be conceded that there are such rights in every free government beyond the control of the State. A government which recognized no such rights, which held the lives, the liberty, and the property of its citizens subject at all times to the absolute disposition and unlimited control of even the most democratic depository of power, is after all but a despotism. ”

“ Can this performance of a legal duty, a duty both to stockholders of the company and to the public, give to plaintiffs a right of action? Can they found such a right on an agreement void for want of corporate authority and forbidden by the policy of the law? To hold that they can, is, in our opinion, to hold that any act performed in executing a void contract makes all its parts valid, and that the more that is done under a contract forbidden by law, the stronger is the claim to its enforcement by the courts. ”

“ What is there to render it void as to a shareholder in a national bank, who owes no debts which he can deduct from the assessed value of his shares? The denial of this right does not affect him. He pays the same amount of tax that he would if the law gave him the right of deduction. He would be in no better condition if the law expressly authorized him to make the deduction. What legal interest has he in a question which only affects others? Why should he invoke the protection of the act of Congress in a case where he has no rights to protect? ”

“ Is a judgment of conviction void when a deposition has been read against a person on trial for crime because he was not confronted with the witness, or because the indictment did not inform him with sufficient clearness of the nature and cause of the accusation? It may be confessed that it is not always very easy to determine what matters go to the jurisdiction of court so as to make its action when erroneous a nullity. But the general rule is that when the court has jurisdiction by law of the offense charged, and of the party who is so charged, its judgments are not nullities. ”

“ But Congress, with due regard to the dignity of the States, and with a desire to interfere only so far as was necessary to protect the banks from any thing beyond their equal share of the public burdens, said, you may tax the real estate of the banks as other real estate is taxed, and you may tax the shares of the bank as the personal property of the owner to the same extent you tax other moneyed capital invested in your State. It was conceived that by this qualification of the power of taxation equality would be secured and injustice prevented. ”

“ The trade-mark may be, and generally is, the adoption of something already in existence as the distinctive symbol of the party using it. At common law the exclusive right to it grows out of its use, and not its mere adoption. By the act of Congress this exclusive right attaches upon registration. But in neither case does it depend upon novelty, invention, discovery, or any work of the brain. It requires no fancy or imagination, no genius, no laborious thought. It is simply founded on priority of appropriation. We look in vain in the statute for any other qualification or condition. ”

“ It cannot be permitted that, when the constitution of a state, the fundamental law of the land, has imposed upon its legislature the duty of guarding, by suitable laws, the health of its citizens, especially in crowded cities, and the protection of their person and property by suppressing and preventing crime, that the power which enables it to perform this duty can be sold, bargained away, under any circumstances, as if it were a mere privilege which the legislator could dispose of at his pleasure. ”

“ Perhaps the most remarkable invention of modern times, in the influence which it has had, and is yet to have, on the affairs of the world, as well as in its total change of all the elements on which land transportation formerly depended, is the railroad system. It is not strange, then, that when we are called to construe a statute relating to this class of subjects, passed before a steam engine or a railroad was thought of, in its application to this modern system, we should be met by difficulties of the gravest character. ”

“ The right to practise law in the courts as a profession, is a privilege granted by the law, under such limitations or conditions in each state or government as the law-making power may prescribe. It is a privilege, and not an absolute right. The distinction may be illustrated by the difference between the right of a party to a suit in court to defend his own cause, and the right of another to appear and defend for him. The one, like the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, is inalienable. ”

“ If it be true that property confiscated under the act of 1862, is confiscated on the ground that it is the property of an enemy, why in the present case was it not alleged to be the property of an enemy? Why was not its condemnation asked for, and the decree of condemnation based on that ground? There is nothing in all the proceedings looking to the condemnation of the property as that of an enemy; on the contrary, it is demanded on the ground that the owner has committed acts of treason and rebellion, crimes which cannot be committed by an enemy. ”

“ We feel quite safe in saying that neither at the time of the formation of the constitution nor since has any inspection law included anything but personal property as a subject of its operation. Nor has it ever been held that the words 'imports and exports' are used in that instrument as applicable to free human beings by any competent judicial authority. We know of nothing which can be exported from one country or imported into another that is not in some sense property-property in regard to which some one is owner, and is either the importer or the exporter. This cannot apply to a free man. ”

“ There remains the duty, simply ministerial, to deliver the patent to the owner,-a duty which, within all the definitions, can be enforced by the writ of mandamus.
It is not always that the ill consequences of a principle should control a court in deciding what the established law on a particular subject is, and in the delicate matter of controlling the action of a high officer of the executive branch of the government, it would certainly not alone be sufficient to justify judicial interposition. ”

“ We are unable to see how a man can be said to have property in the bar of the statute as a defense to his promise to pay. In the most liberal extension of the use of the word 'property' to choses in action, to incorporeal rights, it is new to call the defense of lapse of time to the obligation to pay money, property. It is no natural right. It is the creation of conventional law. We can understand a right to enforce the payment of a lawful debt. The constitution says that no state shall pass any law impairing this obligation. ”

“ If congress can and must, by the very terms of the constitution, make all laws proper for carrying into execution all the powers of any department of the government, and if it can create the circuit court, expand its powers, abridge them, and abolish the court, at will, how can it be that that court, at the least, shall have any implied powers derived from the constitution and independent of the statutes? ”

“ It may be possible that a patent would not be absolutely void where the patentee was not really the first inventor, and the act of congress made provision that any man sued for an infringement of such patent might prove that the patentee was not the original discoverer or inventor. But we do not decide here whether a patent is absolutely void, because the patentee is not the first inventor, nor whether a court of equity should set aside a patent where the party had obtained it without fraud or deceit, believing himself to be the first inventor. ”

“ We are of opinion, therefore, on principle as well as authority, that whenever a question arises in a court of law of the existence of a statute, or of the time when a statute took effect, or of the precise terms of a statute, the judges who are called upon to decide it, have a right to resort to any source of information which in its nature is capable of conveying to the judicial mind a clear and satisfactory answer to such question; always seeking first for that which in its nature is most appropriate, unless the positive law has enacted a different rule. ”

“ While Congress might be willing to subject the government to the judicial enforcement of valid contracts, which could only be valid as against the United States when made by some officer of the government acting under lawful authority, with power vested in him to make such contracts, or to do acts which implied them, the very essence of a tort is that it is an unlawful act, done in violation of the legal rights of some one. ”

“ It is undoubtedly true that, in our system of government, the law-making power is vested in Congress, and the power to construe laws in the course of their administration between citizens, in the courts. And it may be conceded that Congress cannot, under cover of giving a construction to an existing or an expired statute, invade private rights, with which it could not interfere by a new or affirmative statute. ”

“ John's Church, [7] says, very forcibly, 'I think the common mind has everywhere taken in the understanding that taxes are a public imposition, levied by authority of the government for the purpose of carrying on the government in all its machinery and operations-that they are imposed for a public purpose.'
We have established, we think, beyond cavil that there can be no lawful tax which is not laid for a public purpose. It may not be easy to draw the line in all cases so as to decide what is a public purpose in this sense and what is not. ”

“ Any other rule would convert a principle founded alone in the necessity of securing to the government of the United States the means of exercising its legitimate powers, into an unauthorized and unjustifiable invasion of the rights of the States. ”

“ To suffer treasonable sentiments to spread here unchecked, is to permit the stream on which the life of the nation depends to be posioned at its source.
In illustration of this truth, I venture to affirm, that if all the members of the legal profession in the States lately in insurrection had possessed the qualification of a loyal and faithful allegiance to the government, we should have been spared the horrors of the Rebellion. If, then, this qualification be so essential in a lawyer, it cannot be denied that the statute under consideration was eminently calculated to secure that result. ”

“ Remedies are the life of rights, and are equally protected by the constitution. Deprivation of a remedy is equivalent to a deprivation of the right which it is intended to vindicate, unless another remedy exists or is substituted for that which is taken away. The court has frequently held that to deprive a man of a remedy for enforcing a contract is itself a mode of impairing the validity of the contract. And, as before said, the right of defense is just as valuable as the right of action. It is the defendant's remedy. ”