Charles Evans Hughes

“ The court held that, under the Constitution of Texas, courts may not be closed or their processes interfered with by military orders, that courts cannot be ousted by the agencies detailed to aid them, and that their functions cannot be transferred to tribunals unknown to the Constitution. In this view, the court decided that appellants 'without warrant of law' had been depriving complainants of their undoubted right to operate their own properties in a prudent and reasonable way, in accordance with the laws of the state. ”

“ The applicable principle is that, where state officials, purporting to act under state authority, invade rights secured by the Federal Constitution, they are subject to the process of the federal courts in order that the persons injured may have appropriate relief. ”

“ The existence and nature of the complainants' rights are not open to question. Their ownership of the oil properties is undisputed. Their right to the enjoyment and use of these properties, subject to reasonable regulation by the state in the exercise of its power to prevent unnecessary loss, destruction, and waste, is protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. ”

“ It does not follow from the fact that the executive has this range of discretion, deemed to be a necessary incident of his power to suppress disorder, that every sort of action the Governor may take, no matter how unjustified by the exigency or subversive of private right and the jurisdiction of the courts, otherwise available, is conclusively supported by mere executive fiat. ”

“ They leave no room for doubt that there was no military necessity which, from any point of view, could be taken to justify the action of the Governor in attempting to limit complainants' oil production, otherwise lawful. Complainants had a constitutional right to resort to the federal court to have the validity of the commission's orders judicially determined. There was no exigency which justified the Governor in attempting to enforce by executive or military order the restriction which the District Judge had restrained pending proper judicial inquiry. ”

“ If this position is sound to the extent claimed, then when war exists, foreign or domestic, and the country is subdivided into military departments for mere convenience, the commander of one of them can, if he chooses, within the limits, on the plea of necessity, with the approval of the Executive, substitute military force for and the exclusion of the laws, and punish all persons, as he thinks right and proper, without fixed or certain rules. ”

“ As to the actual conditions in the area affected by these orders, the District Court made for following finding:
'It was conceded that at no time has there been any actual uprising in the territory. At no time has any military force been exerted to put riots or mobs down. At no time, except in the refusal of defendant Wolters to observe the injunction in this case, have the civil authorities or courts been interfered with or their processes made impotent. ”

“ Though it was testified to by defendants that from reports which came to them they believed that, if plaintiffs' wells were not shut in, there would be dynamiting of property in the oil fields, and efforts to close them and any others which opened by violence, and that, if that occurred, there would be general trouble in the field, no evidence of any dynamite having been used, or show of violence practiced or actually attempted, or even threatened against any specific property in the field, was offered. ”

“ Appellants contend (1) that the Governor has power to declare martial law; (2) that courts may not review the sufficiency of facts upon which martial law is declared; (3) that courts may not control by injunction the means of enforcing martial law; and (4) that the finding of the Governor of necessity to take property is due process of law.
First. The District Court had jurisdiction. ”

“ It is the emergency that gives the right, and the emergency must be shown to exist before the taking can be justified.' Mitchell v. Harmony, 13 How. 115, 134, 14 L.Ed. 75. See, also, United States v. Russell, 13 Wall. ”