Legal interest

“ The statement that one has dedicated his property to a public use is, therefore, merely another way of saying that, if one embarks in a business which public interest demands shall be regulated, he must know regulation will ensue. ”

“ These capacities, attributes and rights, however, in order to possess a legal entity, and mach more to be susceptible of a legal perpetuity, must be invested in some natural or corporate body; for in no other way can they be exercised or vindicated. ”

“ Is it ever scrupled, in extraordinary Cases, to violate all Regard to the private Property of Individuals, and sacrifice to public Interest a Distinction, which had been establish'd for the Sake of that Interest? ”

“ It is sufficient, for our purpose, that every just law is dictated by reason, and that the practice of every legal court is regulated by equity. It is the quality of reason, to be invariable and constant; and of equity, to give to one man what, in the same case, is given to another. ”

“ All legally recognized interests of substance in developed legal systems are normally individual interests. To the historical jurist of the nineteenth century, this fact, coupled with the development of ownership out of possession, served to show us the idea which was realizing in human experience of the administration of justice and to confirm the position reached by the metaphysical jurists. ”

“ Rights to do certain acts, such, for instance, as the visitation and superintendence of a college and the appointment of its officers, may surely be vested rights, to all legal intents, as completely as the right to possess property. ”

“ That a court is called upon to enforce public rights and not the interests of private property does not diminish its power to protect such rights. 'Courts of equity may, and frequently do, go much farther both to give and withhold relief in furtherance of the public interest than they are accustomed to go when only private interests are involved.' Virginian Ry. ”

“ Here there is no community of will and yet the law may well hold, as we do in America, in both cases, that there is a contract. No metaphysical theory has prevailed to prevent the steady march of the law and of juristic thought in the direction of an objective doctrine of legal transactions. ”

“ At all events,there is an important class of cases in which equity, rightly or wrongly, gives relief to the party in whom the legal right created by the contract is vested, though, confessedly, such party could not recover in an action at law. ”

“ Wherever a person is ignorant or mistaken with respect to his own antecedent and existing private legal rights, interests, duties, liabilities, or other relations, either of property, or contract, or personal status, and enters into some transaction the legal scope and operation of which he clearly apprehends and understands, for the purpose of affecting such assumed rights, interests, or relations, or of carrying out such assumed duties or liabilities, equity will grant its relief, defensive or affirmative, treating the mistake as analogous to, if not identical with, a mistake of fact. ”

“ Under matured systems of jurisprudence a great variety of agreements are denied legal recognition, on the ground that their performance would involve a violation of law, or would be incompatible with good morals or public policy. ”

“ Without leaving our subject to consider the device of consecrating these spurious laws, beyond the genuine, and even beyond constitutional law itself, it falls within it to consider the character of a separate or exclusive interest, which invariably dictates them. ”

“ Whatever might be the answer of a moralist to this question, a jurist must search for its legal solution, in those principles of action which are sanctioned by the usages, the national acts, and the general assent, of that portion of the world of which he considers himself as a part, and to whose law the appeal is made. ”

“ When, therefore, one devotes his property to a use in which the public has an interest, he in effect grants to the public an interest in that use, and must submit to be controlled by the public for the common good to the extent of the interest he has thus created. ”

“ All were made by laws for transferring or invading private property, all are parties or aristocracies of interest, and all are avoided by forbearing to make the laws which make them, and in no other way. ”

“ The act itself, with all the circumstances of the inhabitants before and at the time of its passage, have formed the subject of legal judgments and professional opinions upon which mighty interests have grown up and now repose. ”

“ There must be a litigation upon actual transactions between real parties, growing out of a controversy affecting legal or equitable rights as to person or property. All questions of law arising in such cases are judicially determinable. ”

“ Reverting, for example, to the subject powers, it might be difficult at first glance to discover any essential and fundamental similarity between conditional sales of personalty, escrow transactions, option agreements, agency relations, powers of appointment, etc. But if all these relations are reduced to their lowest generic terms, the conceptions of legal power and legal liability are seen to be dominantly, though not exclusively, applicable throughout the series. ”

“ And in order that you may thoroughly carry out this principle, procure, if you can, a legal education; because there are a great many flaws in titles, agreements, and the like, the knowledge of which will often enable you to lay hands upon various kinds of property to which at first sight you might appear to have no claim. Should you ever be so circumstanced as to be beyond the control of the law, you will, of course, be able to take whatever you want ”

“ 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. ”

“ For, being totally disengaged from the detail of juridical practice, we come something perhaps the better qualified, and certainly much the better disposed, to assert the genuine principle of the laws, in which we can, as a body, have no other than an enlarged and a public interest. ”

“ Legal tribunals have also powerfully assisted to shape and modify conceptions of proprietary right by means of the distinction between Law and Equity, which always makes its first appearance as a distinction between jurisdictions. ”

“ The interests of property and of reputation, and the constitutional rights of individuals as over against the claims of Government, so far as these may be conserved through the agency of lawyers, are by no means so constant and imperative as are the interests of life and health. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That the people have a public interest, a jus publicum, of passage and repassage with their goods by water, and must not be obstructed by nuisances;' 'for the jus privatum of the owner or proprietor is charged with and subject to that jus publicum which belongs to the king's subjects, as the soil of an highway is, which though in point of property it may be a private man's freehold, yet it is charged with a public interest of the people, which may not be prejudiced or damnified.' Id. ”

“ The interests which thus receive recognition and protection from the rules of right are called rights. Every man who has a right to any thing has an interest in it also, but he may have an interest without having a right. Whether his interest amounts to a right depends on whether there exists with respect to it a duty imposed upon any other 182person. In other words, a right is an interest the violation of which is a wrong. ”

“ There is a certain broad sense in which the word 'interest' is sometimes used, which describes the relation which the government has to the acts of all its officials, to all proceedings in courts or in departments, and, indeed, to the conduct of all its citizens. ”

“ Among these he mentions a law which punishes a citizen for an innocent action; a law that destroys or impairs the lawful private contracts of citizens; a law that makes a man a judge in his own cause; and a law that takes the property from A. and gives it to B. 'It is against all reason and right,' says the learned justice, 'for a people to intrust a legislature with such powers ”

“ And yet article 10 expressly stipulates that ‘no advantage shall be taken by lawyers.’ By considering articles 3 and 10 profoundly and in conjunction, we learn that it was the intention of the negotiators to spread the mantle of liberality, apart from all the subtleties and devices of mere legal practitioners, over the whole proceedings. ”

“ Wherever an act undertakes to determine a question of right or obligation, or of property, as the foundation upon which it proceeds, such act is to that extent a judicial one, and not the proper exercise of legislative functions. ”

“ The interest, or, as it is sometimes termed, the 'estate,' acquired in them-that is, the right to continue their prosecution-is often of great value to the possessors, and cannot be arbitrarily taken from them, any more than their real or personal property can be thus taken. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Recognizing the difficulty in defining with exactness the phrase "due process of law," it is certain that these words imply a conformity with natural and inherent principles of justice, and forbid that one man's property, or right to property, shall be taken for the benefit of another, or for the benefit of the State, without compensation; and that [p391] no one shall be condemned in his person or property without an opportunity of being heard in his own defence. ”

“ The words 'in the public interest' are again written into this bill now and will remain in the law so that there will be no question but that the courts and the agencies must take the public interest into account. ”

“ If the power exist in the State governments, the power of judging of the reasonableness of its exercise in a given case, and of the degree of necessity generally which justifies the appropriation of private property to public use, must exist there also. ”

“ Without prejudice to what is determined in the following article, whoever claims that a proper right or legitimate interest has been damaged by an administrative act can propose hierarchical recourse or approach the competent judicial authority. ”

“ And even with help—it is a plague and a mystery till the true meaning has been settled—settled!—by adjudication: that is, by others in authority, the priesthood and the patriarchs, who, under the name of judges, are paid for all the thinking, as lawyers are paid for all the talking to no purpose, permitted at law: for, be it known to all whom it may concern, that is, to all the non-lawyers of our land, that no private interpretation of law is of any authority at law: nor is the right of private judgment recognized or allowed or tolerated or endured in courts of justice! ”

“ The sum total of a man’s personal rights, on the other hand, constitutes his status or personal condition, as opposed to his estate. If he owns land, or chattels, or patent rights, or the good-will of a business, or shares in a company, or if debts are owing to him, all these rights pertain to his estate. But if he is a free man and a citizen, a husband and a father, the rights which he has as such pertain to his status or standing in the law. ”

“ As the 'rules and regulations' of the United States refuse interest unless specially given by some act of Congress, and as the present act refers the question of interest entirely to the 'rules and regulations,' and otherwise is silent thereupon, it seems that the claimants are, at all events, entitled to no interest. ”

“ If one or the other must give way, good sense unhesitatingly requires that justice and positive rights, founded both on valid statutes and valid contracts, should not be sacrificed to mere questions of mode and form. ”

“ The views we have expressed are supported by other adjudged cases, as well as by reason, and by the principles which must be recognized as essential for the protection of private property against the arbitrary action of government. ”

“ A technical synonym for obligation is chose in action or thing in action. A chose in action means, in our modern use of it, a proprietary right in personam; for example, a debt, a share in a joint-stock company, money in the public funds, or a claim for damages for a tort. A non-proprietary right in personam, such as that which arises from a contract to marry, or from the contract of marriage, is no more a chose in action in English law than it is an obligatio in Roman law. ”

“ In the next place, I am by no means prepared to concede that the interests of commerce, and certainly other great interests in society, are to be benefited by incursions upon the common law jurisprudence of the country. ”

“ The subject of the civil law, the ego, the object of the civil law, the objective or natural world, the relation between the two, or property—such is, in a word, the method; the equality of all men before the law is its principle; the respect for property and the directness of litigation are its aims. ”

“ 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. ”