Joseph McKenna

“ A law must be framed and judged of in consideration of the practical affairs of man. The law cannot give personal notice of its provisions or proceedings to everyone. It charges everyone with knowledge of its provisions; of its proceedings it must, at times, adopt some form of indirect notice, and indirect notice is usually efficient notice when the proceedings affect real estate. Of what concerns or may concern their real estate men usually keep informed, and on that probability the law may frame its proceedings ”

“ Arkansas has the right to determine the manner of levying and collecting taxes, and can declare that the particular tract of land shall be chargeable with the taxes, no matter who is the owner or in whose name it is assessed and advertised, and that an erroneous assessment does not vitiate a sale for taxes. ”

“ The burden or taxation could have been easily and definitely assigned by the court. Mistakes in ascribing the ownership of the lands did not increase the taxation, or cast that which should have been paid by one tract of land upon another tract. ”

“ Its process is limited by its boundaries. Constructive service is at times a necessary resource. The land stands accountable to the demands of the state, and the owners are charged with the laws affecting it and the manner by which those demands may be enforced. Huling v. Kaw Valley R. & Improv. Co. 130 U.S. 559, 32 L. ed. 1045, 9 Sup. Ct. Rep. 603. This accountability of the land and the knowledge the owners must be presumed to have had of the laws affecting it is an answer to the contention of the insufficiency of the service. ”

“ Another assignment of error is that 'there was no sufficient proof of the publication of any warning order, or any notice to the plaintiffs in error, filed or produced in court when the decree of sale of their lands was rendered.' To this contention the supreme court replied: 'The act under which the aforesaid proceedings were instituted does not require a warning order to be entered on record or on the complaint, and, if it had, the proceedings could not be attacked collaterally unless such entry was made jurisdictional, as it was in Gregory v. ”

“ It is manifest that any criticism of either is answered by the cases we have cited. The proceedings were appropriate to the nature of the case.
It should be kept in mind that the laws of a state come under the prohibition of the 14th Amendment only when they infringe fundamental rights. ”

“ The supreme court, in passing on this objection, said: 'A decree of a court of competent jurisdiction is not subject to a collateral attack because lands were sold thereunder for illegal penalties and costs. Kelley v. Laconia Levee District, 74 Ark. 202, 85 S. W. 249, 87 S. W. 638; Johnson v. Hunter, 127 Fed. 219.' [74 Ark. 181, 85 S. W. 254.] And this decision is an answer to the other decisions of Arkansas cited by plaintiffs in error, to the effect that a sale for taxes, in excess of the amount due, or embracing costs not legally due, is void. ”