State property

“ Land never was private property in that personal sense of property in which we speak of a thing as our own, with which we may do as we please; and in the administration of estates, as indeed in the administration of all property whatsoever, duty to the State was at all times supposed to override private interest or inclination. ”

“ Both the nation and the state by their agents have encouraged the people to buy land, and they have in that way derived great benefits; the nation by the federal constitution and the state by its constitution and statutes said to me that land could be acquired as absolute property ”

“ Of any person who, owning property in any loyal State or Territory of the United States, or in the District of Columbia, shall hereafter assist and give aid and comfort to such rebellion; and all sales, transfers, or conveyances of any such property, shall be null and void ”

“ Upon any other hypothesis, the law of property would be simply the law of force. Now it is undeniable, that the investment of property in the citizen by the government, whether made for a pecuniary consideration or founded on conditions of civil or political duty, is a contract between the State, or the government acting as its agent, and the grantee ”

“ This determined something, with which the undeterminable property is to be connected, may be of two natures, as will appear immediately. The state has guaranteed to each citizen who has paid his contributions the full use of all his manufactured, built, or bought possessions. ”

“ The legal end of the state in all the property conveyed to citizens is, that this property shall be properly used for the necessities of the state. Hence, the purchaser must agree to use it, and must be in a position to be able to use it; for instance, if he purchases lands, he must be able to farm; if a profession, he must understand it. ”

“ It should be the property of all and inure to the benefit of all—in a word, belong to the State. Those using land, either urban or agricultural, should lease from the State and pay the rent tribute to the State and the benefits of the land—created by God for all—would thus inure to the benefit of all. ”

“ The rights of property are committed into the same hands with the personal rights. Some attention ought, therefore, to be paid to property in the choice of those hands. “For another reason, the votes allowed in the federal legislature to the people of each State, ought to bear some proportion to the comparative wealth of the States. States have not, like individuals, an influence over each other, arising from superior advantages of fortune. ”

“ Although the statehouse grounds be property devoted to public uses, it is property devoted to the public uses of the state, and property whose ownership and control is in the state, and it is not within the competency of the national government to dispossess the state of such control and use, or appropriate the same to its own benefit, or the benefit of any of its corporations or grantees, without suitable compensation to the state. ”

“ Whatsoever citizens have bought with money for their private use—not for trade, which is under the supervision of the state—all furniture, clothing, jewelry, etc., etc., is, for the same reason, absolute property. ”

“ This approach strikes a proper balance between the legitimate and traditional interest which the State has in creating and defining the property interest of its citizens, and the necessity for a uniform administration of the federal revenue statutes.' 363 U.S., at 513-514, 80 S.Ct. ”

“ The state statute required every person being a resident of the state to list his personal property, including moneys, credits, etc., for taxation and 'moneys and other personal property invested, loaned, or otherwise controlled by him as the agent or attorney or on account of any other person or persons ”

“ When we come to legislation on the subject, or to modern State constitutions, there is hardly a change in this particular. Naturally, we find no new legislation confirming the right of property abstractly, or restating that that institution is part of our civilization. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The property of the entire people is the mainstay of the state in the development of the national economy. (2) The property of the entire people is under the special protection of the state. (3) The administration and disposal of the property of the entire people are determined by law. ”

“ Sovereignty and private property, then, constitute the two branches of this all-pervasive social relation, coercion, or dominion.
But private property, contrary to the legal view, is not the creature of the state, nor is it subject to the state. It is pristine and anterior. It springs from the very nature of man. The state is rather the creature and offspring of private property. It arises quite late in the history of property, with the rise of reflective thinking and the capacity for rational cooperation. ”

“ It is a much more serious thing to adopt a rule of construction, as we are asked to do here, which precludes the execution of state laws by state authority in a matter normally within state power. The great body of law in this country which controls acquisition, transmission, and transfer of property, and defines the rights of its owners in relation to the state or to private parties, is found in the statutes and decisions of the state. ”

“ The state is obliged to protect all absolute property, as specified above, and to guarantee to each citizen its secure possession. But all these things, and particularly money, can not in any way be designated as belonging to such and no other persons. In the case of land, corner-stones or wooden posts designate property, which can, therefore, be described on the record-books of the governments as belonging to such or such an individual ”

“ But the State's right over property is a fact widely recognized throughout the other kingdoms of India and quite consonant with the then accumulated wisdom of statecraft which eventually made the peasants lose their respect for private property. ”

“ The general grant of legislative power in the constitution of a state does not enable the legislature, in the exercise either of the right of eminent domain or of the right of taxation, to take private property, without the owner's consent, for any but a public object. ”

“ I can conceive of cases where corporations have been authorized to acquire a limited amount of real estate such as the legislature may conceive to be useful and necessary to the purpose for which they are organized, or to take property for specific uses, in which the question as to whether they have exceeded that amount or perverted the use may be one for the state alone, and not of any private citizen. ”

“ It is claimed, however, that the citizen is deprived of his property without due process of law, if it be taken by or under state authority for any other than a public use, either under the guise of taxation or by the assumption of the right of eminent domain. ”

“ The result of the decision is, that the constitution of the State has secured to every citizen the right of 'acquiring, possessing, and enjoying property;' and that, by the true intent and meaning of this section, property cannot, by a mere act of the legislature, be taken from one man and vested in another directly ”

“ Upon the repeal of the charter of the city, such property passed under the immediate control of the State, the power once delegated to the city in that behalf having been withdrawn.
2. The private property of individuals within the limits of the territory of the city cannot be subjected to the payment of the debts of the city, except through taxation. ”

“ Where property has come to rest within a state, being held there at the pleasure of the owner, for disposal or use, so that he may dispose of it either within the state, or for shipment elsewhere, as his interest dictates, it is deemed to be a part of the general mass of property within the state and is thus subject to its taxing power. ”

“ We must discover a mere form of property, a mere sign of it, which is a sign of whatever is useful in the state, without having in itself the least use; for if it were useful in itself, the state would possess the right to claim it, like the other products, for public purposes. Such a mere form of property is called money. The use of money must be introduced in a state necessarily ”

“ According to my view, whilst the disposition of his movable property by the owner is respected by the laws of all States everywhere, the laws of any particular State and transfers by operation of law, have no extra-territorial force which other States will concede, except by comity. ”

“ It is known as sound policy that, in every well-regulated and enlightened state or government, certain descriptions of property, and also certain institutions-such as churches, hospitals, academies, cemeteries, and the like-are exempt from taxation ”

“ We think the Congressional purpose can best be accomplished by application of settled state rules as to what constitutes 'real property' so long as it is plain, as it is here, that the state rules do not effect a discrimination against the government, or patently run counter to the terms of the Act. ”

“ Fox, 94 U.S. 315, 320, it was said: 'The power of the state to regulate the tenure of real property within her limits, and the modes of its acquisition and transfer, and the rules of its descent, and the extent to which a testamentary dispotsition of it may be exercised by its owners, is undoubted. ”

“ Under the old law the owner of private property could prospect without a licence on his own land, and could give authority to any licensed person. If minerals were found, the State President, subject to certain compensation, could throw open the land as a public diggings. ”

“ Such laws as the franchise-tax law in this State, which the Court of Appeals recently unanimously decided constitutional- such a law as that passed in Congress last year for the purpose of establishing a Department of Commerce and Labor, under which there should be a bureau to oversee and secure publicity from the great corporations which do an interstate business--such a law as that passed at the same time for the regulation of the great highways of commerce so as to keep these roads clear on fair terms to all producers in getting their goods to market--these laws are in the interest not merely of the people as a whole, but of the propertied classes. For in no way is the stability of property better assured than by making it patent to our people that property bears its proper share of the burdens of the State; ”

“ By the cession, public property passes from one government to the other, but private property remains as before, and with it those municipal laws which are designed to secure its peaceful use and enjoyment. ”

“ The only restraint when the constitution imposes on their authority is, that private property shall not be taken for public use, without just compensation, and the consent of the representatives of the people. ”

“ Because the government has given it the power to take and to hold property, in a particular form, and for particular purposes, has the government a consequent right substantially to change that form, or to vary the purposes to which the property is to be applied? ”

“ otherwise they would have known that it is to the property of the citizen, and not to the demands of the creditor of the state, that the first and original faith of civil society is pledged. The claim of the citizen is prior in time, paramount in title, superior in equity. The fortunes of individuals, whether possessed by acquisition, or by descent, or in virtue of a participation in the goods of some community, were no part of the creditor's security, expressed or implied. They never so much as entered into his head, when he made his bargain. ”

“ To solve this contradiction we must discover its ground.
The state takes possession of the remainder, not in respect to its form, as remainder and as property, but in respect to its substance, as something which is necessary to sustain life.
In order to solve the contradiction thoroughly, form and substance must, therefore, be separated. The state must have the power of taking the substance without touching the form.
Without exhibiting here unnecessary profundity, I shall solve the problem at once. ”

“ Property is admitted to have an existence, even in the savage state of nature. The bow, the arrow, and the tomahawk; the hunting and the fishing ground, are species of property, as important to an American savage, as pearls, rubies, and diamonds are to the Mogul, or a Nabob in the East, or the lands, tenements, hereditaments, messages, gold and silver of the Europeans. And if property is necessary for the support of savage life, it is by no means less so in civil society. ”

“ If we do not restore the Institution of Property we cannot escape restoring the Institution of Slavery; there is no third course.” ”

“ If the reader thinks it is pushing logic too far to question a nation’s right of property in the territory which it possesses, I will simply remind him of the fact that at all ages the results of the fictitious right of national property have been pretensions to suzerainty, tributes, monarchical privileges, statute-labor, quotas of men and money, supplies of merchandise, &c. ”

“ Whenever it was necessary in the administration of affairs that the Government should take private property for public use, it had the right to take that private property on the condition of making compensation for it, and on no other condition. ”

“ In support of its contention that a federal definition of real property should be applied, the government relies on the generally accepted principle that Congress normally intends that its laws shall operate uniformly throughout the nation so that the federal program will remain unimpaired. ”