Land warrant

“ When the bill in the present case was filed, all the claims of soldiers thus illegally purchased by the partnership, with money advanced by complainant, had been converted into land warrants, and all the warrants had been sold or located. The original defect in the purchase had, in many cases, been cured by the assignment of the warrant by the soldier after its issue. ”

“ The parties at first were disposed to bluff me off, and pooh-pooh our claims; but they have [355] probably taken legal advice, and have changed their tune in consequence.”
“Do they propose anything?”
“Yes; they offer five thousand dollars for the surrender of the land warrant, which will insure them a perfect title.”
“Five thousand dollars!” repeated Squire Turner, slowly. “Of course, that is a good sum compared with the original value of the warrant; but—”
“Small when the present value of the land is considered. Precisely so.” ”

“ It authorized the governor to issue land-warrants for not less than 160 and not more than 320 acres in one warrant, to the amount of the 500,000 acres, and the treasurer to sell them at $2 per acre, and the purchasers and their assigns to locate them, on behalf of the state, upon any vacant and unappropriated lands beionging to the United States within the state of California subject to such location; but it declared that no such location should be made except in conformity to the law of congress, in not less than 320 acres in one body. ”

“ It also held that, after the lapse of 21 years from the return of a survey, the presumption is that the warrant was located as returned by the surveyor of the land-office; and that, in the absence of rebutting facts, the official courses and distances will determine the location of the disputed line or corner, but that this presumption is not conclusive, and may be rebutted by the proof of original marks and monuments tending to show that the actual location on the ground was different from the official courses and distances. ”

“ Under the laws of North Carolina for appropriating the vacant lands, an entry is made with the entry taker before a warrant issues: the warrant describes the land specified in the entry: the special or locative calls for appropriation of the land can be seen and examined as well from a view of the warrant as from the entry. ”

“ That act gave the person who had marked and improved a piece of ground, the pre-emption to 1000 acres of land, to include his improvement, provided the warrant was entered within twelve months. That any act prolonging the time for making this entry, would continue the original right, is not to be questioned. It is plainly the intention of the Legislature, and nothing can prevent that intention from being effectual, but the intervention of some other title, which the Legislature cannot rightfully remove. ”

“ A land warrant to be granted to Leitensdorfer.Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Secretary of War be, and he is hereby directed to issue a land warrant to John Eugene Leitensdorfer for three hundred and twenty acres ”

“ The selection of the land, which first determines the state where it is to be taken up, is the act, not of the government, but of the holder of the warrant. The government receives no new consideration, and makes no new promise or grant, when the warrant is assigned by the soldier, or when it is actually located by himself or his assignee, and the land and the state in which it lies thereby for the first time designated; and never, at any stage of the transaction, receives into the treasury any money from any person. ”

“ The question then arises, whether the decision of the commissioners in 1824, with regard to this claim, was not correct. The title was nothing but a warrant or permit to survey, occupy, and improve the land, with a view to a grant when this should be done, and with an express condition to be void if not done within three years. Such warrants or permits have invariably been respected by our government, whenever there has appeared any bona fide attempt to perform the conditions, or any plausible excuse for their non-performance. ”

“ The military warrants, to which these questions refer, originate in the land law of Virginia. The question, whether a warrant completely executed by survey, can be withdrawn and so revived by the withdrawal, as to be located in another place, has never, so far as is known, been decided in the Courts of that State. In Kentucky, where the same law governs, it has been recently determined, that a warrant once carried into survey with the consent of the owner, cannot be re-entered and surveyed in any other place. In Ohio, it is not understood that the question has been decided. ”

“ The right of every individual holding a warrant to appropriate to himself waste lands, was not more substantially, or forcibly given, by the laws of Virginia, than the right to purchase any vacant tract of the United States land is given, by the act of May 10, 1800. ”

“ Other parts of these land laws might be referred to, to show that this word is not always used in a technical sense as synonymous with patent. And that it is not so used in the proviso to the act of 1783, we think is very evident; and throughout all these laws, so far as we have been able to discover, whenever there is a limitation to one thousand acres, it is applicable to the warrant, and not to the grant.
It is clearly to be inferred, from various parts of these land laws, that warrants were transferable. Thus, in one of the earliest acts passed on the subject in the year 1777, (Dig. 261.) ”

“ The great original impropriety was in omitting to require that the previous entries made in the name of Massie, should be withdrawn, expressly, when this entry was made.
This case is not, we think, like Taylor's Lessee vs. Meyers, reported in 7 Wheat. 23. In that case the owner had openly abandoned his location and survey, and had placed his warrant on other land. In such case, the land was universally considered as returning to the mass of vacant land, and becoming, like other vacant land, subject to appropriation. ”

“ That the registers and receivers of the land offices shall hereafter be severally authorized to charge and receive for their services, in locating all military bounty land warrants issued since the 11th day of February, 1847, the same compensation or per-centage to which they are entitled by law for sales of public lands for cash, at the rate of $1 25 per acre, the said compensation to be hereafter paid by the assignees or holders of such warrants. ”

“ The holder of a later warrant is not permitted to encroach upon a prior settler, and cut off land adjacent to his improvement, under the pretext that there is surplus land, and that the settler can fill his claim in another direction. Such encroachment was held unlawful, although made in 1814, upon a settlement which commenced in 1775, and upon which no legal survey had ever been made: Blair v. ”

“ And be it further enacted, That the provisions of the first and fourth sections of this act, shall extend to and embrace owners of military land warrants, issued, by the United States, in satisfaction of claims for bounty land for services during the revolutionary war ”

“ It is desirable to set forth the Rule.
'A person aggrieved by an unlawful search and seizure may move the district court for the district in which the property was seized for the return of the property and to suppress for use as evidence anything so obtained on the ground that (1) the property was illegally seized without warrant, or (2) the warrant is insufficient on its face, or (3) property seized is not that described in the warrant, or (4) there was not probable cause for believing the existence of the grounds on which the warrant was issued, or (5) the warrant was illegally executed. ”

“ Once a lawful search has begun, it is also far more likely that it will not exceed proper bounds when it is done pursuant to a judicial authorization 'particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.' Further, a warrant assures the individual whose property is searched or seized of the lawful authority of the executing officer, his need to search, and the limits of his power to search. ”

“ If the complainant states "positively and not upon information or belief," or states "evidential facts from which such judge or magistrate determines the existence of probable cause" to believe that obscene material "is being held or kept in any place or in any building," "such judge or magistrate shall issue a search warrant directed to any peace officer commanding him to search the place therein described and to seize and bring before such judge or magistrate the personal property therein described.' [3] The owner of the property is not afforded a hearing before the warrant issues ”

“ The warrant procedure is designed to guarantee that a decision to search private property is justified by a reasonable governmental interest. But reasonableness is still the ultimate standard. If a valid public interest justifies the intrusion contemplated, then there is probable cause to issue a suitably restricted search warrant. ”

“ Part of the difficulty derives from the fact that effects enjoy derivative protection when located in a house or other area within reach of the Fourth Amendment. Under existing doctrine, effects seized in warrantless, illegal searches of houses are fruits of a constitutional violation and may not be received in evidence. But is a warrant required to seize contraband or criminal evidence when it is found by officers at a place where they are legally entitled to be at the time? ”

“ It sometimes is difficult to fix boundary stones between the private right of property and the police power when, as in the case at bar, we know of few decisions that are very much in point. But it is recognized that the state, as quasi-sovereign and representative of the interests of the public, has a standing in court to protect the atmosphere, the water, and the forests within its territory, irrespective of the assent or dissent of the private owners of the land most immediately concerned. ”

“ No right existed in plaintiff to all these lands, or to any specific sections of them, during this period; no obligation of the government to withdraw them from sale until plaintiff filed a map definitely showing the entire line of its road in the general land-office. The defendants purchased from officers who had the power to sell. They acquired a valid title. If plaintiff has been injured it is by its own laches. If there is no land to satisfy its demand, it is because it delayed over three years to file its map to establish the line of its road, and for years afterwards to make selections. ”

“ If the man has left his home but not the town and is still within the jurisdiction of the local court, the magistrate will usually issue a summons (which in many cities the wife is expected to serve) calling on the man to appear at court on the date set for the hearing. If he fails to appear a warrant for his arrest is issued. If he has left the city but not the state, local courts may issue warrants, which can be mailed to the city to which the man has gone and served by the police there; or an officer may be sent from the home town with a warrant to arrest the man and bring him back. ”

“ The very theory of the case of the plaintiff in error is that, because the officers of the land department have neglected or refused to perform their duty in determining the question of fact on which the validity of its claim depends, it has an equity to require the investigation to be made in a court of justice, which ought to have been made by them, so that if, in point of fact, the lands claimed passed under the terms of the grant, the legal title wrongfully granted to the defendant may be decreed to it. ”

“ The only possible ground upon which the judgment below can be sustained consistently with the law of the land is to hold that no court of any state had jurisdiction in the year 1867, even with the parties before it, to inquire, in an action of trespass, whether an alleged taking of the private property of a citizen was a mere trespass, or was an act of war upon the part of the defendant, a Confederate soldier, and to give judgment according to the result of that inquiry. ”

“ The prayer of the bill was for both a restraining and a mandatory injunction, the one forbidding the defendant land officers from carrying out the orders of the Secretary of the Interior and the Commissioner of the General Land Office, and the other commanding the defendant land officers to accept the application of the complainants, and allow them to purchase the lands upon the payment of the sum of $20 per acre. It was, moreover, prayed that defendants he restrained from receiving or accepting the application of any other person for the entry of the lands. ”

“ Now suppose that, instead of a dealing with the plaintiff's property, the case is that force has proceeded directly from the defendant's body to the plaintiff's body, it is urged that, as the law cannot be less careful of the persons than of the property of its subjects, the only defences possible are similar to those which would have been open to an alleged trespass on land. ”

“ Unless these circumstances are identified and applied, any warrant authorizing a search for a particular document might, in conjunction with the plain view exception, permit "a government official to use a seemingly precise and legal warrant only as a ticket to get into a man's home, and, once inside, to launch forth upon unconfined searches and indiscriminate seizures as if armed with all the unbridled and illegal power of a general warrant." ”