Edward Douglass White

“ This conclusion is inevitable since it is obvious that to concede that the wrongful and successful evasion of the prohibition against bringing in imported merchandise, or of knowingly, in violation of a further prohibition, dealing with such merchandise, was beyond the scope of the complete power to prohibit importation, would be in substance to deny any power whatever. Indeed, it is evident that a power to prohibit which is operative and effective only as long as its prohibitions are not disobeyed is not an absolute power, but is scarcely worthy of being denominated a relative one. ”

“ Our jurisdiction to directly review depends upon the constitutional question, since the other matters relied upon are, as a general rule, within the exclusive jurisdiction of the circuit court of appeals of the ninth circuit, although, if power to review attaches to the case because of the constitutional question, that authority gives rise to the duty to determine all the questions involved. ”

“ But the authority being absolute, it follows that the right to assert it must endure and reach beyond the mere capacity of persons to evade its commands to the control of those things which are essential to make the power existing and operative,-a conclusion the truth of which cannot be escaped in the light of the doctrine on that subject, so luminously stated in Gibbons v. ”