Legal capacity

“ Legal or equitable rights, acquired under either system of laws, may be enforced in any court of either sovereignty competent to hear and determine such kind of rights and not restrained by its constitution in the exercise of such jurisdiction. ”

“ All systems do to some extent, and those which recognise precedent as a chief source of law do more especially, show a tendency to carry this process of development too far. Under the influence of the spirit of authority the growth of law goes on unchecked by any effective control, and in course of time the domain of legal principle comes to include much that would be better left to the arbitrium of courts of justice. ”

“ Wherever, by either the common law or the statute law of a State, a right of action has become fixed and a legal liability incurred, that liability may be enforced and the right of action pursued in any court which has jurisdiction of such matters and can obtain jurisdiction of the parties. ”

“ Carried too far in the stage of equity and natural law, overdevelopment of the administrative element brings about a reaction and in the maturity of law individualization is pushed to the wall once more. Yet this elimination of the administrative takes place more in theory and in appearance than in reality. For justice comes to be administered in large measure through the application of legal standards which admit of a wide margin for the facts of particular cases, and the application of these standards is committed to laymen or to the discretion of the tribunal. ”

“ On condition that you protect my rights, I will protect your rights. How, then, does some party obtain the right to claim the protection of the other? Evidently, by actually protecting the rights of the other.
But if this is so, no party will ever obtain a strictly legal claim to the protection of the other. ”

“ Conceding, or better realizing, this inherently fluctuating character or quality of public policy, we see that the enactment of statutes to declare or define it must of necessity be a dangerous business, because such statutes, however accurately they reflect the public policy of the moment of their enactment, must almost immediately begin to be wrong. The Common Law, reposing, according to the legal fiction, in the bosom of the court, is flexible, and can change or be changed, as we have seen, with the change of condition ”

“ Where the rights in jeopardy are those of private citizens, and are of those classes which the constitution of the United States either confers or has taken under its protection, and no adequate remedy for their enforcement is provided by the forms and proceedings purely legal, the same necessity invokes and justifies, in cases to which its remedies can be applied, that jurisdiction in equity vested by the constitution of the United States, and which cannot be affected by the legislation of the states. ”

“ They assert the power to look beyond the corporation, to presume or to ascertain the residence of the individuals composing it, and to model their decision upon that foundation. In other words, they affirm that in an action at law, the purely legal rights, asserted by one of the parties upon the record, may be maintained by showing or presuming that these rights are vested in some other person who is no party to the controversy before them. ”

“ They exhibit a striking specimen of the involutions which ingenuity may cast about legal rights, and an instance of the growing pretensions of some of the State Courts over the exercise of the powers of the general government. ”

“ But usually the real significance and legal consequence of each term will depend upon its context and the nature of the interests it is invoked to distinguish.
Statutes may be called public because the rights conferred are of general application, while laws known as private affect few or selected individuals or localities. ”

“ The general principle that a party must raise his own legal rights and interests and not those of third parties, and the limited exceptions to that principle, are part of the same set of standing requirements devised by this Court to limit the category of parties who may seek relief in federal court. ”

“ In short, this is an area 'of judicial decision within which the policy of the law is so dominated by the sweep of federal statutes that legal relations which they affect must be deemed governed by federal law having its source in those statutes, rather than by local law.' Sola Electric Co. ”

“ After all, this is the Nation's ultimate judicial tribunal, not a super-legal-aid bureau. ”

“ As we have seen Congress, through its power to define the jurisdiction of inferior federal courts and to create such courts for the exercise of the judicial power, could, subject to other constitutional limitations, create the Emergency Court of Appeals, give to it exclusive equity jurisdiction to determine the validity of price regulations prescribed by the Administrator, and foreclose any further or other consideration of the validity of a regulation as a defense to a prosecution for its violation. ”

“ If the exercise of judicial power be such 'as the settled maxims of law permit and sanction, and under such safeguards for the protection of individual rights as those maxims prescribe for the class of cases to which the one in question belongs,' there has been no deprivation of due process of law. ”

“ That wherever there exists at law a complete and adequate power, either for the prosecution of a right or the redressing of a wrong, courts of equity, with the exception of a few cases of concurrent authority, have no jurisdiction or power to act. ”

“ Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress. ”

“ For the rights for the protection of which our authority is invoked are the rights of sovereignty, of political jurisdiction, of government, of corporate existence as a State, with all its constitutional powers and privileges. No case of private rights or private property infringed, or in danger of actual or threatened infringement, is presented by the bill, in a judicial form, for the judgment of the court. ”

“ If one man can be allowed to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny. Legal process is an essential part of the democratic process. ”

“ If a federal court concludes it is uncertain whether a Civil Rule truly governs a given question of practice, and if a relevant state rule of law differs, the extent to which application of the Civil Rule would interfere with substantive rights is certainly one of the factors that should be considered in deciding whether the Civil Rule applies. ”

“ All persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind, and no other. ”

“ It would seem that no argument is necessary to establish the proposition that when substantial rights, resting upon a statute, which is clearly within the legislative power, come in conflict with mere forms and modes of procedure in the courts, the latter must give way, and adapt themselves to the forms necessary to give effect to such rights. ”

“ If the laws enacted by a state be within the legitimate sphere of legislative power, and their enforcement be attended with the observance of those general rules which our system of jurisprudence prescribes for the security of private rights, the harshness, injustice, and oppressive character of such laws will not invalidate them as affecting life, liberty, or property without due process of law. ”

“ The jurisdiction which Article III of the Constitution conferred on the national judiciary reflected the assumption that the state courts, not the federal courts, would remain the primary guardians of that fundamental security of person and property which the long evolution of the common law had secured to one individual as against other individuals. ”

“ When rights are asserted in one State on the basis of a judgment procured in another, it frequently becomes necessary, as it does here, to define the duty of the courts of the former State in view of that State's power to regulate its own affairs. ”

“ When a law creates a classification but neither targets a suspect class nor burdens a fundamental right, the court presumes the law is valid and will uphold it as long as it is rationally related to some legitimate government interest. ”

“ The legislative judgments at issue here embrace assessments of the necessity and wisdom of procedural guarantees; these are questions which the Constitution has entrusted at least in part to courts, and upon which courts have been understood to possess particular competence. The fundamental issue here is, therefore, in what measure and fashion the Court must defer to legislative determinations which encompass constitutional issues of procedural protection. ”

“ So the equitable powers of courts of law over their own process, to prevent abuses, oppression, and injustice, are inherent and equally extensive and efficient, as is also their power to protect their own jurisdiction and officers in the possession of property that is in the custody of the law. ”

“ But, according to the course of proceeding under this head in equity, in order to entitle the party to the remedy, a case must be presented appropriate for the exercise of judicial power; the rights in danger, as we have seen, must be rights of persons or property, not merely political rights, which do not belong to the jurisdiction of a court, either in law or equity. ”

“ Rigid enforcement of the jurisdictional requirement will limit the interference of Federal courts in State legislation and will accord with the policy of Congress in narrowing the jurisdiction of Federal courts by successive increases in the jurisdictional amount. ”

“ The source of substantive rights enforced by a federal court under diversity jurisdiction, it cannot be said too often, is the law of the States. Whenever that law is authoritatively declared by a State, whether its voice be the legislature or its highest court, such law ought to govern in litigation founded on that law, whether the forum of application is a State or a federal court and whether the remedies be sought at law or may be had in equity. ”

“ Remedies of a statutory character, where the right to be enforced was unknown at the common law, are to be followed with strictness, both as to the methods to be pursued and the cases to which they are to be applied. ”

“ A law that limits a right in one case may limit a remedy in another. This statute well might be held to announce a general policy, governing both obligations that arise within the jurisdiction and suits that are brought in the courts of the United States. ”

“ We think the rule is settled in this court that whenever a new right is granted by statute, or a new remedy for violation of an old right, or whenever such rights and remedies are dependent on State statutes or acts of Congress, the jurisdiction of such cases, as between the law side and the equity side of the Federal courts, must be determined by the essential character of the case, and unless it comes within some of the recognized heads of equitable jurisdiction it must be held to belong to the other. ”

“ That court best serves the law which recognizes that the rules of law which grew up in a remote generation may, in the fullness of experience, be found to serve another generation badly, and which discards the old rule when it finds that another rule of law represents what should be according to the established and settled judgment of society, and no considerable property rights have become vested in reliance upon the old rule. ”