Arbitrary government

“ The tyranny of Arbitrary Government consists as much in its means as in its ends; & it would be a ridiculous & absurd constitution which should be less cautious to guard against abuses in the one case than in the other. All the means & instruments which a free Government exercises, as well as the ends & objects which it pursues, are to partake of its own essential character, & to be conformed to its genuine spirit. A free Government with arbitrary means to administer it is a contradiction; a free Government without adequate provisions for personal security is an absurdity ”

“ If the means employed have no substantial relation to public objects which the government may legally accomplish, if they are arbitrary and unreasonable beyond the necessities of the case, the judiciary will disregard mere forms and interfere for the protection of rights injuriously affected by such illegal action. ”

“ First, due process of law requires the States to protect individuals against the arbitrary exercise of state power by assuring that the fundamental policy choices underlying any exercise of state power are explicitly articulated by some responsible organ of state government. Second, due process of law is denied by state procedural mechanisms that allow for the exercise of arbitrary power without providing any means whereby arbitrary action may be reviewed or corrected. ”

“ The concept that the Bill of Rights and other constitutional protections against arbitrary government are inoperative when they become inconvenient or when expediency dictates otherwise is a very dangerous doctrine and, if allowed to flourish, would destroy the benefit of a written Constitution and undermine the basis of our Government. ”

“ There is no liberty if the power of judging be not separate from the legislative and executive powers; were it joined with the legislative the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control. ”

“ Above all that generation deeply feared and bitterly abhorred the existence of arbitrary, unchecked power in the hands of any government official, particularly when it came to punishing alleged offenses against the state. ”

“ And due process is so secured by laws operating on all alike, and not subjecting the individual to the arbitrary exercise of the powers of government, unrestrained by the established principles of private right and distributive justice. ”

“ The power of arraigning the high officers of government before a tribunal whose sentence may expel them from their seats and brand them as infamous is eminently a popular remedy—a remedy designed to be employed for the protection of private right and public liberty against the abuses of injustice and the encroachments of arbitrary power. ”

“ While due process protection in the substantive sense limits what the government may do in both its legislative and its executive capacities, criteria to identify what is fatally arbitrary differ depending on whether it is legislation or a specific act of a governmental officer that is at issue. ”

“ It may be safely assumed as an axiom in the government of states that the greatest wrongs inflicted upon a people are caused by unjust and arbitrary legislation, or by the unrelenting decrees of despotic rulers, and that the timely revocation of injurious and oppressive measures is the greatest good that can be conferred upon a nation. The legislator or ruler who has the wisdom and magnanimity to retrace his steps when convinced of error will sooner or later be rewarded with the respect and gratitude of an intelligent and patriotic people.
Our own history, although embracing a period less than a century, affords abundant proof that most, if not all, of our domestic troubles are directly traceable to violations of the organic law and excessive legislation. ”

“ If there be one, then I shall deplore that the Constitution and laws of this Republic are so defective in their most essential aims as to sanction an exercise of arbitrary power which in no free country on the face of the globe would be admitted a single moment. ”

“ Every man of public experience knows how powerful and seductive precedent is as an argument in the interpretation of laws and of constitutional provisions, or in justification of governmental practices. When a thing, no matter how questionable, has once been done by the government, and approved, or even acquiesced in, by the people, that act will surely be used as a justification of its being done again. In nothing is the authority of precedent more dangerous than in defending usurpations of governmental power. ”

“ But precisely because it is the Constitution alone which warrants judicial interference in sovereign operations of the State, the basis of judgment as to the Constitutionality of state action must be a rational one, approaching the text which is the only commission for our power not in a literalistic way, as if we had a tax statute before us, but as the basic charter of our society, setting out in spare but meaningful terms the principles of government. ”

“ The statute puts the constituents of each of those separate classes on the same plane of equality. It is not arbitrary legislation, except in the sense that all legislation is arbitrary. If it be within the power of the legislature to enact the statute, then arbitrariness cannot be predicated of it in a court of law. And it cannot be held to be beyond legislative power simply because of its classification of occupations. ”

“ It is to thrust upon the courts a burden that they have no precedents to enable them to carry, and to give them a power approaching the arbitrary, the abuse of which might involve our whole judicial system in disaster. ”

“ Its language is that 'no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.' As the State, in the administration of its government, acts through its executive, legislative, and judicial departments, the inhibition applies to them. ”

“ But, whatever may be the issue of that examination, the legislative body ought not to have a power of arraigning the person, nor, of course, the conduct, of him who is entrusted with the executive power. His person should be sacred, because, as it is necessary, for the good of the state, to prevent the legislative body from rendering themselves arbitrary, the moment he is accused or tried there is an end of liberty. ”

“ And if the judiciary at times seems to fill the important station of a check in the government, it is rather a check on the legislature, who may attempt to pass laws contrary to the Constitution, or on the executive, who may violate both the laws and Constitution, than on the people themselves in their primary capacity as makers and amenders of constitutions. ”

“ Is a State liable—or is the Government liable—for the act of any officer, that act not being authorized by law?
It has been decided a thousand times, that a State is not liable for the torts and trespasses of its officers. How then can the agent, acting outside of his authority, be prosecuted under a law deriving its entire validity from a constitutional amendment applying only to States? Does an officer, by acting contrary to State law, become so like a State that the word State, used in the Constitution, includes him? ”

“ It is indeed a singular misconception of the nature and character of our constitutional system of government to suggest that the settled distinction which the doctrine just stated points out between judicial authority over justiciable controversies and legislative power as to purely political questions tends to destroy the duty of the judiciary in proper cases to enforce the Constitution. ”

“ If they attempt to act arbitrarily, without investigation, or without the exercise of judgment and discretion, or if they fix rates so palpably unreasonable and unjust as to amount to arbitrary action, they violate their duty, and go beyond the powers conferred upon them. ”

“ What will promote these objects the legislative power decides with large discretion, and the courts have no authority to review the exercise of that discretion. It is only when laws are passed under color of the police power and having no real or substantial relation to the purposes for which the power exists, that the courts can refuse to give them effect. ”

“ It will not surely be confessed, that the government has wanted authority to execute its own laws; that the legislature has been awed by the populace, by the dregs of the populace, the drunkards and the beggars! Yet when the provisions made for the execution of a law so salutary, so just, and so necessary, were found defective, why were not others substituted of greater efficacy? Why, when one informer was torn in pieces, were there not new securities proposed to protect those who should by the same offence displease the people afterwards? ”

“ It is not right, on the one hand, that attorneys, or any set of men, should be subject to an arbitrary exertion of power; and it is equally unfair for them to be protected, by having those who are to judge between them and the public, always belonging to their own body. ”

“ They give to the Federal government the power to strip the States of the right to vindicate their authority in their own courts against a violator of their laws, when the transgressor happens to be an officer of the United States, or alleges that he is denied or cannot enforce some right under their laws. ”

“ It very clearly appears, from this exposition of the powers of the general government and of the States, that there may be an exercise of concurrent jurisdiction in the case of a granted power; that the mere grant works no exclusion of State sovereignty, even where its concurrent exercise may lead to occasional interference in the policy of either government, and that nothing short of absolute and total repugnancy and contradiction will suffice. ”

“ It would be arbitrary, in the proper sense of the term, for an official to act in the teeth of a statute or stubbornly to refuse to act at all where a statute commands action, but where he essays to exercise the jurisdiction conferred upon him, though his errors may be subject to subsequent correction, they cannot be enjoined as an arbitrary exercise of his authority. ”

“ Now, all through that instrument we find limitations upon the power, both of the general government and the state governments, so as to prevent oppression and injustice. No legislation, therefore, tending to promote either can consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution. A law which interferes with the contracts of others, and compels one of the parties to receive in satisfaction something different from that stipulated, without reference to its actual value in the market, necessarily works such injustice and wrong. ”

“ It is difficult to believe that the wise men who sat in the convention which framed the Constitution and advocated its adoption ever contemplated the possibility of a State being required to assert its authority over offenders against its laws in other tribunals than those of its own creation, and least of all in an inferior tribunal of the new government. ”

“ It reduces to actual practice and in the form of a legislative enactment, sanctioned by judicial approval, the illustration that is generally made for the purpose of showing that there are some things so contrary to justice as to admit of no doubt of their utter illegality; such as the arbitrary taking, under the form of a legislative enactment, of the property of one man and bestowing it upon another. ”

“ If they fail, all their acts hostile to the rightful government are violations of law, and originate no rights which can be recognized by the courts of the nation whose authority and existence have been alike assailed.' Chase's Decisions, 136. ”

“ If you want to ascertain whether your system will stand in all weathers, you must test it when the rule of law and order have replaced that of arbitrary will—when men present themselves, not as the scared recipients of bounty, but as the assertors of admitted rights. ”

“ What power of the government could be executed by its own means, in any State disposed to resist its execution by a course of legislation? The laws must be executed by individuals acting within the several States. If these individuals may be exposed to penalties, and if the Courts of the Union cannot correct the judgments by which these penalties may be enforced, the course of the government may be, at any time, arrested by the will of one of its members. ”

“ To interfere with the penal laws of a State, where they are not levelled against the legitimate powers of the Union, but have for their sole object the internal government of the country, is a very serious measure, which Congress cannot be supposed to adopt lightly, or inconsiderately. ”

“ If the constitution or laws may be violated by proceedings instituted by a State against its own citizens, and if that violation may be such as essentially to affect the constitution and the laws, such as to arrest the progress of government in its constitutional course, why should these cases be excepted from that provision which expressly extends the judicial power of the Union to all cases arising under the constitution and laws? ”

“ How can a law which, beyond all human control, arms the legislature with the legal right of doing what the constitution prohibits their doing, be constitutional? Nay, worse: which puts them in the actual possession of a power, the very existence of which is a violation of the contract. How can the legislature legislate themselves into the possession of a power, not only not granted, but expressly withheld by the people? ”

“ Appellants contend that the legislative action was taken without investigation and hence must be considered to be arbitrary and beyond the legislative power. There is no principle of constitutional law which nullifies action taken by a legislature, otherwise competent, in the absence of a special investigation. ”