Source: https://www.thefire.org/first-amendment-library/decision/davis-v-massachusetts/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 18:22:02+00:00

Document:
Whether a city can prohibit an individual from preaching on a citys common without a permit from the mayor.
Argued and submitted March 25, 1897.
ERROR TO THE SUPERIOR COURT OF SUFFOLK COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.*46 Mr. James F. Pickering for plaintiff in error submitted on his brief.Mr. Hosea M. Knowlton, Attorney General of Massachusetts, for defendant in error. Mr. George C. Travis was on his brief.
“There is no evidence before us to show that the power of the legislature over the common is less than its power over any other park dedicated to the use of the public or over public streets the legal title to which is in a city or town. Lincoln v. Boston, 148 Mass. 578, 580. As representative of the public it may and does exercise control over the use which the public may make of such places, and it may and does delegate more or less of such control to the city or town immediately concerned. For the legislature absolutely or conditionally to forbid public speaking in a highway or public park is no more an infringement of the rights of a member of the public than for the owner of a private house to forbid it in his house. When no proprietary right interferes the legislature may end the right of the public to enter upon the public place by putting an end to the dedication to public uses. So it may take the less step of limiting the public use to certain purposes. See Dillon Mun. Corp. secs. 393, 407, 651, 656, 666; Brooklyn Park Commissioners v. Armstrong, 45 N.Y. 234, 243, 244.
It is, therefore, conclusively determined there was no right in the plaintiff in error to use the common except in such mode and subject to such regulations as the legislature in its wisdom may have deemed proper to prescribe. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States does not destroy the power of the States to enact police regulations as to the subjects within their control, Barbier v. Connolly, 113 U.S. 27, 31; Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway Co. v. Beckwith, 129 U.S. 26, 29; Giozza v. Tiernan, 148 U.S. 657; Jones v. Brim, 165 U.S. 180, 182, and does not have the effect of creating a particular and personal right in the *48 citizen to use public property in defiance of the constitution and laws of the State.
The assertion that although it be conceded that the power existed in the State or municipality to absolutely control the use of the common, the particular ordinance in question is nevertheless void because arbitrary and unreasonable in that it vests in the mayor the power to determine when he will grant a permit, in truth, whilst admitting on the one hand the power to control, on the other denies its existence. The right to absolutely exclude all right to use, necessarily includes the authority to determine under what circumstances such use may be availed of, as the greater power contains the lesser. The finding of the court of last resort of the State of Massachusetts being that no particular right was possessed by the plaintiff in error to the use of the common, is in reason, therefore, conclusive of the controversy which the record presents, entirely aside from the fact that the power conferred upon the chief executive officer of the city of Boston by the ordinance in question may be fairly claimed to be a mere administrative function vested in the mayor in order to effectuate the purpose for which the common was maintained and by which its use was regulated. In re Kollock, 165 U.S. 526, 536, 537. The plaintiff in error cannot avail himself of the right granted by the State and yet obtain exemption from the lawful regulations to which this right on his part was subjected by law.

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