Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ But generally ratification of an act is not good if attempted at a time when the ratifying authority could not lawfully do the act. Bird v. Brown, 4 Exch, 786, 799. If we apply that principle this statute is invalid. For if the Legislature of Florida had attempted to make the plaintiff pay in 1919 for passages through the lock of a canal, that took place before 1917, without any promise of reward, there is nothing in the case as it stands to indicate that it could have done so any more effectively than it could have made a man pay a baker for a gratuitous deposit of rolls. ”

“ A tax may be imposed in respect of past benefits, so that if instead of calling it a ratification Congress had purported to impose the tax for the first time the enactment would have been within its power. ”

“ It is true also that when rights are asserted on the ground of some slight technical defect or contrary to some strongly prevailing view of justice, Courts have allowed them to be defeated by subsequent legislation and have used various circumlocutions, some of which are collected in Danforth v. ”