The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1893-09-06
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You ask me, what is the drift of
this argument? What is the real
objection to the Dartmouth College
decision? No state ought to recall
it's own grant duly and properly
made. No state ought to deny to
an incorporated body of men the
equal protection of it's laws. No
state ought to deprive them of life,
liberty or property without due pro-
cess of law. [ grant all this. Every
lawyer grants it. Every citizen
grants it. No one denies it. But
that is not the question. The ques-
tion is whether superintendence of
corpora tions shall be taken from the
state judicatories, by successive u.s.
urpations of Jurisdiction, and vested
entirely, or substantially, in the
Federal judicatories. In using the
word usurpation I intend to speak
guardedly, and not to use an exag-
gerated expression.
The decision Of the supreme court
of the United States in the Mime
sofa Milk case in which it declared
that the regulation of the charges
of public carriers is a judicial and
not legislative question, is most pot
emit. The meaning is that it is a
Federal judicial question. In the state
of the experimenting jurisdiction
possessed by the supreme court over
the highest state courts of judica-
ture, under the judiciary act, and
in the face of this enormous and in
defensible extention of Federal jur-
isdictiOn, it can be in the most i'm
portant cases little else than a Fed
eral judicial question; and the whole
question thus passed out of the hands
| of the people, where it was immemOr-
tally held by our ancestors, into the
hands of q judiciary not responsible to
them.
THE CORPORATION A "CITIzEN.
now intend to point out a more
fragrant usurpation than any of
which have hitherto spoken. The
constitution Of the United States
provides that the judicial power of
| the United States shall extend to
controversies between citizens of
different states. The judiciary act
contains similar expression.
| Whatever meaning may properly be
ascribed to the word ''person" it
had never been supposed that the
word "citizen' could include a cor
poration. The word had never been
so employed in any act of Parlia-
ment or other act of legislation; nor
in any legal treatise; nor in any argu-
ment addressed to a court of Justice:
nor in any law glossary or dictionz
airy. For fifty years the suprem9
court of the United States had held,
that it did not mean corporation.
When corporation sued or was
sued it held itself under an
obligation to look behind the ar
titicial body into the persons who
actually composed it, for a corpora
tion is but an aggregation of men,
and to see to it that all the members
of a plaintiff corporation were citi-
zens of different state from the
defendant, and that all the members
of defendant corporation were citi-
zens of a different state from the
plaintiff. But as was stated by Mr..
Russell, in his admirable address
last year before the American Bar
association, when the first railroad
corporation made it's appearance in
court, the court reversed this prin-
ciple and declared that a corporation
was citizen. 1t seems to have lost
its intellect in the presence of a
railroad company, and it's first VIC
lation of this rule of obvious pro
prlety, made in the year 1874, is
found in one of it's weakest and most
inconclusive opinions. It required
but one or two steps in the progress
of usurpation for it to hold that
when corporation is created by or
under the laws of particular state
it is, for the purposes of Federal
Jurisdiction, to be conclusiUely pre-
summed to be citizen of that state.