Cases in Constitutional Law #2: we're sorry for the inconvience of doing your job
Law ·Sunday October 11, 2009 @ 19:38 EDT (link)
[✓] Muskrat v. United States (1911): In this case the U.S. government attempted to use the court as a sounding board for distribution of tribal property among the Cherokee Indians, who had recently been admitted to citizenship. Chief Justice Taney ruled that the court could rule on only "cases and controversies", original or appellate as specified in the Constitution, a case being "a suit instituted according to the regular course of judicial procedure" (Marshall), and controversies meaning either the same as cases or referring only to civil suits (Field). There needed to be actual litigants with conflicting interests. The ruling closed the door on "this court… [being] required to give opinions on the nature of advice concerning legislative action,—a function never conferred upon it by the Constitution, and against the exercise of which this could has steadily set its face from the beginning."
[✓] Luther v. Borden (1849): The court correctly refused to interfere in a political matter, that of the charter government of Rhode Island (that restricted the franchise to certain landowners) against Thomas Dorr's popular government, judging it a matter for the state itself, and the executive and legislative branches, if interference from the federal government was necessary at all (in this case, it was not). Admission of the state into the original union, and seating of its congressmen, was held as tacit approval by the legislature of Rhode Island's (and Oregon's, in Pacific States Telegraph and Telephone Co. v. Oregon) "republican form of government".
[✓] Colegrove v. Green (1946): The court again refused to involve itself in a political matter having to do with the apportionment of congressional seats in Illinois: in 1946, rural areas were vastly overrepresented due to continued use of the 1901 apportionment despite much of the state population being now concentrated near Chicago. (Would that a later court had held itself to the same restraint regarding school districts as this court held itself to in regards to voting districts.)
[✗] Baker v. Carr (1962): This case was similar to Colegrove; it took place in Tennessee, which likewise had undergone a population shift but was still using apportionment based on the 1901 census. In this case, however, the court decided to interfere in states' business, under cover of the Fourteenth Amendment—a mess that was rammed through despite rejection by southern states after ousting carpetbagger congresses that had ratified it before passage. To a libertarian, apportionment of voting districts is almost entirely irrelevant since the non-aggression principle denies the state the power to initiate force or take property. However, a state's internal arrangements should remain its business and the Constitution does not allow for federal interference, as emphasized by the Tenth Amendment. While their actions are somewhat understandable—a vote in one county should have comparative weight to one in another—it was not under federal jurisdiction. From Frankfurter's dissent (with Harlan):
The court today reverses a uniform course of decision established by a dozen cases, including one by which the very claim now sustained was unanimously rejected only five years ago. The impressive body of rulings thus cast aside reflected the equally uniform course of our political history regarding the relationship between population and legislative representation—a wholly different matter from denial of the franchise to individuals because of race, color, religion or sex. …
… The Framers carefully and with deliberate forethought refused to so enthrone the judiciary. In this situation, as in others of like nature, appeal for relief does not belong here. Appeal must be to an informed, civilly militant electorate. … In any event there is nothing judicially more unseemly than for this Court to make in terrorem pronouncements….
This begins a "train of usurpations" done under the umbrella of the Fourteenth Amendment, that has continued until this day.
[✘] Frothingham v. Mellon (1923): A chance for the court to "show its quality": the plaintiff brought suit alleging that the effect of certain appropriations would increase her burden of taxation, an unjust taking without due process of law (violating the Fifth Amendment). The court failed here, by affirming the decision of a lower court that dismissed the suit, on the pretext that
[A taxpayer's] interest in the moneys of the Treasury… is comparatively minute and indeterminable; and the effects of future taxation of any payment out of the funds so remote, fluctuating, and uncertain that no basis is afforded for an appeal….
The administration of any statute likely to produce additional taxation to be imposed upon a vast number of taxpayers, the extent of whose several liability is indefinite and constantly changing, is essentially a matter of public, and not of individual, concern. If one taxpayer may champion and litigate such a cause, then every other taxpayer may do the same, not only in respect to the statute here under review, but also in respect of every other appropriation act and statute whose administration requires the outlay of public money, and whose validity may be questioned. The bare suggestion of such a result, with its attendant inconveniences, goes far to sustain the conclusion which we have reached, that a suit of this character cannot be maintained.
So they ruled against taxpayers having remedy for unconstitutional takings and apportionments because doing their job would inconvenience them, although with a few good precedents the envisioned flood is unlikely as lower courts would fall in line and the high court would then not need to hear cases of this nature. An individual can be prosecuted for larceny in any amount; why not the government, especially with the practical effect of the broad application actually stopping millions or billions of dollars of unconstitutional takings.
