Charter (law)

“ The power to acquire rights of any description, to transact business of any description, to make contracts of any description, to sue on those contracts, is given and measured by its charter; and that charter is a law of the United States. This being can acquire no right, make no contract, bring no suit, which is not authorized by a law of the United States. It is not only itself the mere creature of a law, but all its actions, and all its rights are dependent on the same law. Can a being, thus constituted, have a case, which does not arise literally, as well as substantially, under the law? ”

“ The charter is a charter of privileges and immunities; and these are holden by the trustees expressly against the State for ever.
It is admitted that the State, by its courts of law, can enforce the will of the donor, and compel a faithful execution of the trust. The plaintiffs claim no exemption from legal responsibility. They hold themselves at all times answerable to the law of the land, for their conduct in the trust committed to them. ”

“ The Great Charter is old law. It is codification, or rather it is a selection of those points of the existing law which the king had constantly violated, for the purpose of stating them in such form that his specific pledge to regard them could be secured, and his consent to machinery for enforcing them in case he broke his pledge. The source of the Great Charter, then, of its various provisions and of its underlying principle, must be sought in the existing law that regulated the relations between the king and the barons—the feudal law. ”

“ If a legislature should pass a law charter, for advancing the exclusive interest of the legislative body, or of some other combination of men, at the expense of the national interest, both moral and pecuniary, it obviously makes a false proclamation, and the question is, whether the genuine sanction of law, or this false proclamation, ought to be most sacred. ”

“ Few societies adopt any special rules of order of their own under that name, contenting themselves with putting a few such rules in their by-laws and then adopting some standard work on parliamentary law as their authority. When a society is incorporated the charter may take the place of the constitution, and in such a case the by-laws would contain all the rules of the society, except those in the charter that cannot be changed without previous notice. The by-laws should always provide for their amendment as shown in 68, and also for a quorum, 64. ”

“ ANDROS
I have here the original court order, declaring your charter forfeit, and I shall now trouble your Charter Committee to produce the original document.
TREAT
One moment, sir. Has not every Englishman a right to defend his case before a court of law? ”

“ They cannot exceed the limits of their charter, and those limits they have no exclusive right to define. Who that has attended the deliberations of a state legislature, and remarked the frequent recurrence of constitutional questions about their powers, but must see that there is scarcely any law concerning property, or office, or crime, on which ingenuity may not raise a doubt respecting either the letter or spirit of the constitution? ”

“ We say that this decision is contrary to the Constitution of the United States. The principles upon which we stand are elementary. The State law was passed in 1840, after the grant of the charter and after the execution of the notes.
(Mr. Wharton then entered into a history of the decisions of this and other courts upon the following propositions.) 1st. That a charter is a contract between a State and the corporation. 6 Cranch, 87, decided in 1810. A grant is an executed contract, and a repeal of the law cannot set it aside. ”

“ The legislative power is exercised collectively by the king, the Chamber of Peers, and the Chamber of Deputies. Article 15. The proposal of laws belongs to the king, the Chamber of Peers, and the Chamber of Deputies. Nevertheless every taxation law must be first voted by the Chamber of Deputies. Article 16. Every law shall be freely discussed and voted by the majority of each of the two chambers. Article 17. If a project of law has been rejected by one of the three powers, it cannot be presented again in the same session. Article 18. The king alone sanctions and promulgates the laws. ”

“ If a charter be a mere grant of political power, if it create a civil institution, to be employed in the administration of the government, or, if the funds be public property alone, and the government alone be interested in the management of them, the legislative power over such charter is not restrained by the constitution, but remains unlimited. ”

“ May, 1816.—Here is the Charter which a majority of the Chamber proposes to confer upon us.—Article. [142] The fundamental principles of the constitution may be changed as often as we wish; nevertheless, seeing that stability is desirable, they shall not be changed more than three times a year.—Art. Every law emanates from the King; this is the first evidence of the right of petition accorded to all frenchmen.—Art. The laws shall be executed according to the pleasure of the Deputies, each in their respective departments.—Art. ”

“ All investigations of opinions and votes given prior to the restoration are forbidden: the same oblivion is required from the tribunals and from citizens. Article 11. The conscription is abolished. The method of recruiting for the army and navy is determined by the law. Forms of the Government of the King. Article 12. The person of the king is inviolable and sacred. His ministers are responsible. To the king alone belongs the executive power. Article 13. The king is the supreme head of the state ”

“ To designate the infringement or revocation of a charter by such a description would be to affirm the existence of a right in the sovereign to invest a charter, from whatever motive it may originally have been granted, with such a character of inviolability or perpetuity that no Parliament should, on ever such strong grounds of public good, have the power of interfering with it. ”

“ Every valuable privilege given by the charter, and which conduced to an acceptance of it and an organization under it, is a contract which cannot be changed by the legislature, where the power to do so is not reserved in the charter. ”

“ If the granted powers are appropriate to the professed end, so that the granting of them cannot be regarded as usurpation of authority by Congress, or an evasion of constitutional restrictions, under color of establishing a bank, then the charter is constitutional, whether these powers be thought indispensable by others or not, or whether even Congress itself deemed them absolutely indispensable, or only thought them fit and suitable, or whether they are more or less appropriate to their end. It is enough that they are appropriate ”

“ When they won their independence the people of each state substituted a CONSTITUTION for the charter; the difference between a charter and a constitution being that the former is given TO the people by some higher authority, while the latter is adopted BY the people themselves. All of our states alike, whether created before or after the Union was formed, are self-governing under constitutions of their own making. ”

“ The interpretation should be, as the judgment in Southam emphasizes, a generous rather than a legalistic one, aimed at fulfilling the purpose of the guarantee and securing for individuals the full benefit of the Charter's protection.
We are invited, therefore, to consider the purpose of the Charter in general and of the right to liberty in particular.
The Charter is predicated on a particular conception of the place of the individual in society. An individual is not a totally independent entity disconnected from the society in which he or she lives. ”

“ But many of them are matters of primary importance in the constitutional history of England. The Great Charter must not, however, be overrated as an expression of general constitutional rights; to a large extent it is a mere recapitulation of the claims of the baronage, and gives redress for their feudal grievances in the matters of aids, reliefs, wardships, &c., its object being the repression of arbitrary exactions by the king on his tenants-in-chief. ”

“ Whilst we hold it a sound maxim that no powers should be conceded to the Federal government which cannot be regularly and legitimately found in the charter of its creation, we acknowledge equally the obligation to withhold from it no power or attribute which, by the same charter, has been declared necessary to the execution of expressly granted powers, and to the fulfilment of clear and well-defined duties. ”

“ With respect to the power of the convention to impose this inhibition, it seems to be pertinent in this place to recur to the opinion of one contemporary with the establishment of the Government, and whose distinguished services in the formation and adoption of our national charter point him out as the artifex maximus of our Federal system. ”

“ The first charter, the charter of James 1st. is more like a treaty between independent sovereigns, than like a charter of grant of privileges from a sovereign to his subjects. Our ancestors were tempted by the prospect and promise of a government of their own, independent in religion, government, commerce, manufactures, and every thing else, excepting one or two articles of trifling importance. ”

“ A charter is certainly in form and substance a contract; it is a grant of powers, rights, and privileges; and it usually gives a capacity to take and to hold property. Where a charter creates a corporation, it emphatically confers this capacity; for it is an incident to a corporation, (unless prohibited,) to take and to hold property. A charter granted to private persons, for private purposes, is within the terms, and the reason of the prohibition. ”

“ That the General Assembly doth also express its deep regret, that a spirit has, in sundry instances, been manifested by the federal government to enlarge its powers by forced constructions of the constitutional charter which defines them ”

“ The 9th and 10th articles of amendments to the constitution are as follow:
"The enumeration in the constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." "The powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Now, sir, can language be more explicit than this, in declaring that this charter contains certain enumerated powers, and that all not enumerated are reserved to the States or to the people? ”

“ Power to legislate, founded upon such a reservation, is certainly not without limit, but it may safely be affirmed that it reserves to the legislature the authority to make any alteration or amendment in a charter granted, subject to it, that will not defeat or substantially impair the object of the grant, or any rights which have vested under it, which the legislature may deem necessary to secure either the object of the grant or any other public right not expressly granted away by the charter. ”

“ The infatuation opposed to the reasoning, which discloses the destruction of responsibility and legislative integrity, lurking in the system of charter and banking, is an unexamined idea, that our constitutions contain some charm, some magical influence, which will preserve liberty, by the agency of avaricious charter-making and charter-taking representatives. History produces no instance of national happiness, under a legislature, corrupted by the most sordid passion, of which human nature is susceptible. ”

“ The charter of 1546 contains a reference to statutes to be given later by the king. There was considerable delay in preparing these, and the liberty of action thus left to the Society seems to have been used unwisely, for the commissioners of 1549 reported that its state was “much out of order, governed at large and pleasure for want of statutes ... the fellows for the most part too bad.” ”

“ A legislature, by charters here, and charters there, can so wedge up present or future ages, that the long possession of these tenants for years will become a set- lied right, and the remainder-man will forget his reversion.
A power to make irrepealable law charters, is above responsibility, and independent of its constituent. The correction of a corrupt or ruinous measure, comprises all the essence and benefit of responsibility. ”

“ A charter, then, being a contract within the scope of the constitution, the next consideration, which has arisen upon this important subject, is, whether the principle applies to all charters, public as well as private. Corporations are divisible into two sorts, such as are strictly public, and such as are private. ”

“ The charter they crafted—with its separate branches of Government, enumerated powers, checks and balances, and later the specific protections provided by our Bill of Rights—guides our Nation and inspires others around the world. ”

“ The charter, therefore, by which provincial governments are constituted, may be always legally, and, where it is either inconvenient in its nature, or misapplied in its use, may be equitably repealed; by such repeal the whole fabrick of subordination is immediately destroyed, and the constitution sunk at once into a chaos; the society is dissolved into a tumult of individuals, without authority to command, or obligation to obey, without any punishment of wrongs, but by personal resentment, or any protection of right, but by the hand of the possessor. ”

“ The mysteries of the sanctuary of iniquity must be unveiled, the tables of the old alliance broken, and all the objects of the ancient faith thrown in a heap to the swine. A charter has been given to us,—a resume of political science, the monument of twenty legislatures. ”

“ In Articuli super Chartas; when the Great Charter was confirmed, at the Request of his Prelates, Earls and Barons, we find these Passages. 1. Nevertheless the King and his Council do not intend by reason of this Statute to diminish the King’s Right, &c. 2. And notwithstanding all these things before-mentioned, or any part of them; both the King and his Council, and all they that were present at the making of this Ordinance, will and intend that the Right and Prerogative of his Crown shall be saved to him in all things. ”