Legal uniformity

“ All these exceptional jurisdictions are objects of the liveliest apprehension to democracy, because they infringe the rule of uniformity, which is the image and often the caricature of equality, and also because they are a stronghold of efficiency. ”

“ The argument that such result must have been intended, since it is to be assumed that Congress contemplated uniformity, that is, that the next of kin entitled to take under the statute should be uniformly applied in all the states, after all comes to saying that it must be assumed that Congress intended to create a uniformity on one subject by producing discord and want of uniformity as to many others. ”

“ A uniformity which is not essential as regards different states cannot be essential as regards different parts of a state, provided that in each and all there is no infraction of the constitutional provision. ”

“ Appellees' contention that the uniformity clause precludes such classification would in effect add to the constitutional restraints upon Congress an equal protection clause more restrictive than that of the Fourteenth Amendment, and is without judicial or historical support. ”

“ Manifestly, the obligation of the State to give the protection of equal laws can be performed only where its laws operate, that is, within its own jurisdiction. It is there that the equality of legal right must be maintained. ”

“ If there are such things as political axioms, the propriety of the judicial power of a government being coextensive with its legislative, may be ranked among the number. The mere necessity of uniformity in the interpretation of the national laws, decides the question. Thirteen independent courts of final jurisdiction over the same causes, arising upon the same laws, is a hydra in government, from which nothing but contradiction and confusion can proceed. ”

“ It is accurate to say that in the colonies prior to the confederation, and in the states prior to the time of the adoption of the Constitution, the wisdom of restraining the levy of duties, imposts, and excises by an express requirement of inherent equality and uniformity had likewise nowhere found expression. ”

“ We are told by appellee that to deny the State jurisdiction here will create a vast no-man's-land, subject to regulation by no agency or court. We are told by appellant that to grant jurisdiction would produce confusion and conflicts with federal policy. Unfortunately, both may be right. We believe, however, that Congress has expressed its judgment in favor of uniformity. ”

“ The paramount interest is not local but national, admitting of and requiring uniformity of regulation. Such uniformity, even though it be the uniformity of governmental nonaction, may be highly necessary to preserve equality of opportunity and treatment among the various communities and states concerned. ”

“ Although a federal equity court does have jurisdiction of a particular proceeding, it may, in its sound discretion, whether its jurisdiction is invoked on the ground of diversity of citizenship or otherwise, 'refuse to enforce or protect legal rights, the exercise of which may be prejudicial to the public interest' ”

“ But I would think the statutory policy of protecting dependents would be better served by uniformity, rather than by the diversity which would flow from incorporating into the Act the laws of forty-eight States. ”

“ First among those is the expectation that scrupulous adherence by federal courts to the provisions of state law, as reflected both in local statutes and in state court decisions, will promote an appropriate uniformity in the administration of law within each of the States. Uniformity will, in turn, assure proper regard in the federal courts for the areas of law left by the Constitution to state discretion and administration, and, in addition, will prevent the incongruity that stems from dissimilar treatment by state and federal courts of the same or similar factual situations. ”

“ It is a rule of law, in the construction of all statutes, contracts and legal instruments whatsoever—that is, those which courts design, not to invalidate, but to enforce—that where words are susceptible of two meanings, one consistent, and the other inconsistent, with liberty, justice and right, that sense is always to be adopted, which is consistent with right, unless there be something in other parts of the instrument sufficient to prove that the other is the true meaning. ”

“ The last restriction, as to the equal protection of the laws, is not violated by any diversity in the jurisdiction of the several courts as to subject-matter, amount, or finality of decision, if all persons within the territorial limits of their respective jurisdictions have an equal right, in like cases and under like circumstances, to resort to them for redress. ”

“ That is the theory of diversity jurisdiction. Whether it is a sound theory, whether diversity jurisdiction is necessary or desirable in order to avoid possible unfairness by state courts, state judges and juries, against outsiders, whether the federal courts ought to be relieved of the burden of diversity litigation, these are matters which are not my concern as a judge. They are the concern of those whose business it is to legislate, not mine. I speak as one who has long favored the entire abolition of diversity jurisdiction. ”

“ The same fluid and dynamic conception which underlies the modern notion of liberty, as secured to the individual by the constitutional immunity, must also underlie the cognate notion of equality. No state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction "the equal protection of the laws." [54] Restrictions, viewed narrowly, may seem to foster inequality. The same restrictions, when viewed broadly, may be seen "to be necessary in the long run in order to establish the equality of position between the parties in which liberty of contract begins." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Each State prescribes its own modes of judicial proceeding. If diversities of laws and judicial proceedings may exist in the several States without violating the equality clause in the Fourteenth Amendment, there is no solid reason why there may not be such diversities in different parts of the same State. ”

“ The language of the great charter is, that no freeman shall be taken or imprisoned but by the lawful judgment of his equals, or by the law of the land. And many subsequent old statutes expressly direct, that no man shall be taken or imprisoned by suggestion or petition to the king or his council, unless it be by legal indictment, or the process of the common-law. ”

“ In giving federal courts 'cognizance' of equity suits in cases of diversity jurisdiction, Congress never gave, nor did the federal courts ever claim, the power to dney substantive rights created by State law or to create substantive rights denied by State law. ”

“ The Constitution of the United States, in creating and defining the judicial power of the General Government, establishes this distinction between law and equity, and a party who claims a legal title must proceed at law, and may undoubtedly proceed according to the forms of practice in such cases in the State court. ”

“ It is obvious, that, if there were independent supreme courts of common law, of equity, and of admiralty, a diversity of judgment might, and almost necessarily would spring up, not only, as to the limits of the jurisdiction of each tribunal; but as to the fundamental doctrines of municipal, constitutional, and public law. The effect of this diversity would be, that a different rule would, or might be promulgated on the most interesting subjects by the several tribunals; and thus the citizens be involved in endless doubts, not only as to their private rights, but as to their public duties. ”

“ Equality of protection under the laws implies not only accessibility by each one, whatever his race, on the same terms with others to the courts of the country for the security of his person and property, but that in the administration of criminal justice he shall not be subjected, for the same offense, to any greater or different punishment. ”

“ That diversity which is to be found in civil controversies, does not exist in criminal cases. That diversity which contributes to the security of property in civil cases, would have pernicious effects in criminal ones. ”

“ The 'equal protection' analysis of the Court is, I submit, a 'wolf in sheep's clothing,' for that rationale is no more than a masquerade of a supposedly objective standard for subjective judicial judgment as to what state legislation offends notions of 'fundamental fairness.' Under the rubric of 'equal protection' this Court has in recent times effectively substituted its own 'enlightened' social philosophy or that of the legislature no less than did in the older days the judicial adherents of the now discredited doctrine of 'substantive' due process. ”

“ Civil rights must vary according to status. But such rights as any person may have, those the courts are bound to guard indifferently. If the courts do not perform this, their first and most sacred duty, I apprehend that order cannot be permanently maintained, for this is equality before the law; and equality before the law is the cornerstone of order in every modern state. ”

“ I take it to be an elementary rule of constitutional construction that no one provision of the Constitution is to be segregated from all the others, and to be considered alone, but that all the provisions bearing upon a particular subject are to be brought into view and to be so interpreted as to effectuate the great purposes of the instrument. ”

“ The equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment entitles every person, whose life, liberty or property is in issue, to the benefits of grand and petit juries chosen without regard to race, color or creed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is juggling with words to say that all the independents make up a single 'class,' and by reason of that fact must be subjected to a single rule. Whether the class is divisible into subclass § is the very question to be answered. There may be division and subdivision unless separation can be found to be so void of rationality as to be the expression of a whim rather than an exercise of judgment. 'We have no right,' it is now said, 'to conjure up possible situations which might justify the discrimination.' The court has taught a different doctrine in its earlier decisions. ”

“ Federal Constitutional questions we must consider, because a federal court would not give effect, in either a diversity or nondiversity case, to a state statute that violates the Constitution of the United States. ”

“ Indeed, I had supposed, if there was a universal and uncontroverted proposition in the common law, as it is known and understood in England and in this country, it was, that no act done in violation of the laws of the land, or in disregard or contravention of its principles, can be the foundation of a claim which can be enforced at law or in equity. ”

“ Where an issue is solely concerned with diversity jurisdiction, as was the situation in Meredith v. Winter Haven, 320 U.S. 228, a different consideration may become relevant. "For purposes of diversity jurisdiction a federal court is, 'in effect, only another court of the State.'" Angel v. ”

“ Indeed, the promulgation of the old Rule 23 provided a new means for resolving in a single federal litigation, based on diversity jurisdiction, the claims of all members of a class, even though some in the class were not of diverse citizenship from parties on the other side. ”

“ The more complicated society becomes, the greater the diversity of its problems and the more does legislation direct itself to the diversities. Statutes, that is, are directed to less than universal situations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even in diversity cases, when 'a right is enforceable in a federal as well as in a State court,' and the federal court sits as 'another court of the State,' we have recognized that 'the forms and mode of enforcing the right may at times, naturally enough, vary because the two judicial systems are not identic.' Guaranty Trust Co. ”

“ An inquiry into constitutional principle, not mathematics, determines whether heightened scrutiny is appropriate. Whenever evolving principles of equality, rooted in the Equal Protection Clause, require that certain classifications be viewed as potentially discriminatory, and when history reveals systemic unequal treatment, more searching judicial inquiry than minimum rationality becomes relevant. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In conformity with these principles, an ample jurisdiction has been established, under which, among other things, the powers of ordinary courts are supplemented by more flexile methods, the rules of law are prevented from becoming instruments of injustice, persons are restrained from asserting doubtful rights in a manner productive of irreparable damage, and, in the absence of positive law, universal justice is maintained. It has been a constant aspiration to bring Law and Equity into harmony. ”