Source: https://m.openjurist.org/262/us/100/cunard-co-v-mellon
Timestamp: 2019-05-25 05:15:37
Document Index: 471302735

Matched Legal Cases: ['art, 285', '§ 238', '§ 1215', 'art, 2', '§ 145', '§ 141', '§ 54', '§ 185', '§ 174', '§ 76', '§ 123', '§ 204', '§ 166', '§ 58', '§ 128', '§ 5471', '§ 642', '§ 20', '§ 1']

262 US 100 Cunard Co v. Mellon | OpenJurist
262 U.S. 100 - Cunard Co v. Mellon
CUNARD S. S. CO., Limited, et al.
October 6, 1922, the Attorney General, in answer to an inquiry by the Secretary of the Treasury, gave an opinion to the effect that the National Prohibition Act, construed in connection with the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, makes it unlawful (a) for any ship, whether domestic or foreign, to bring into territorial waters of the United States, or to carry while within such waters, intoxicating liquors intended for beverage purposes, whether as sea stores or cargo, and (b) for any domestic ship even when without those waters to carry such liquors for such purposes either as cargo or sea stores. The President thereupon directed the preparation, promulgation and application of new instructions conforming to that construction of the act. Being advised of this and that under the new instructions the defendants would seize all liquors carried in contravention of the act as so construed and would proceed to subject the plaintiffs and their ships to penalties provided in the act, the plaintiffs brought these suits.
The hearings in the District Court were on the bills or amended bills, motions to dismiss and answers, and there was a decree of dismissal on the merits in each suit. 284 Fed. 890; International Mercantile Marine v. Stuart, 285 Fed. 79. Direct appeals under Judicial Code, § 238 (Comp. St. § 1215), bring the cases here.
These words, if taken in their ordinary sense, are very plain. The articles proscribed are intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes. The acts prohibited in respect of them are manufacture, sale and transportation within a designated field, importation into the same, and exportation therefrom; and the designated field is the United Stat § and all territory subject to its jurisdiction. There is no controversy here as to what constitutes intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes; but opposing contentions are made respecting what is comprehended in the terms 'transportation,' 'importation' and 'territory.'
Some of the contentions ascribe a technical meaning to the words 'transportation' and 'importation.' We think they are to be taken in their ordinary sense, for it better comports with the object to be attained. In thatsense transportation comprehends any real carrying about or from one place to another. It is not essential that the carrying be for hire, or by one for another; nor that it be incidental to a transfer of the possession or title. If one carries in his own conveyance for his own purposes it is transportation no less than when a public arrier at the instance of a consignor carriers and delivers to a consignee for a stipulated charge. See United States v. Simpson, 252 U. S. 465, 40 Sup. Ct. 364, 64 L. Ed. 665, 10 A. L. R. 510. Importation, in a like sense, consists in bringing an article into a country from the outside. If there be an actual bringing in it is importation regardless of the mode in which it is effected. Entry through a custom house is not of the essence of the act.
Various meanings are sought to be attributed to the term 'territory' in the phrase 'the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof.' We are of opinion that it means the regional areas—of land and adjacent waters—over which the United States claims and exercises dominion and control as a sovereign power. The immediate context and the purport of the entire section show that the term is used in a physical and not a metaphorical sense—that it refers to areas or districts having fixity of location and recognized boundaries. See United States v. Bevans, 3 Wheat. 336, 390, 4 L. Ed. 404.
It now is settled in the United States and recognized elsewhere that the territory subject to its jurisdiction includes the land areas under its dominion and control, the ports, harbors, bays and other enclosed arms of the sea along its coast and a marginal belt of the sea extending from the coast line outward a marine league, or three geographic miles. Church v. Hubbart, 2 Cranch, 187, 234, 2 L. Ed. 249; The Ann, 1 Fed. Cas. No. 397, p. 926; United States v. Smiley, 27 Fed. Cas. No. 16317, p. 1132; Manchester v. Massachusetts, 139 U. S. 240, 257, 258, 11 Sup. Ct. 559, 35 L. Ed. 159; Louisiana v. Mississippi, 202 U. S. 1, 52, 26 Sup. Ct. 408, 50 L. Ed. 913; 1 Kent's Com. (12th Ed.) *29; 1 Moore, International Law Digest, § 145; 1 Hyde, International Law, §§ 141, 142, 154; Wilson, International Law (8th Ed.) § 54; Westlake, International Law (2d Ed.) p. 187, et seq; Wheaton, International Law (5th Eng. Ed. [Phillipson]) p. 282; 1 Oppenheim International Law (3d Ed.) §§ 185-189, 252. This, we hold, is the territory which the amendment designates as its field of operation; and the designation is not of a part of this territory but of 'all' of it.
The defendants contend that the amendment also covers domestic merchant ships outside the waters of the United States, whether on the high seas or in foreign waters. But it does not say so, and what it does say shows, as we have indicated, that it is confined to the physical territory of the United States. In support of their contention the defendants refer to the statement sometimes made that a merchant ship is a part of the territory of the country whose flag she flies. But this, as has been aptly observed, is a figure of speech, a metaphor. Scharrenberg v. Dollar S. S. Co., 245 U. S. 122, 127, 38 Sup. Ct. 28, 62 L. Ed. 189; In re Ross, 140 U. S. 453, 464, 11 Sup. Ct. 897, 35 L. Ed. 581; 1 Moore International Law Digest, § 174; Westlake, International Law (2d Ed.) p. 264; Hall, International Law (7th Ed. [Higgins]) § 76; Manning, Law of Nations (Amos), p. 276; Piggott Nationality, pt. II, p. 13. The jurisdiction which it is intended to describe arises out of the nationalit of the ship, as established by her domicile, registry and use of the flag, and partakes more of the characteristics of personal than of territorial sovereignty. See The Hamilton, 207 U. S. 398, 403, 28 Sup. Ct. 133, 52 L. Ed. 264; American Banana Co. v. United Fruit Co., 213 U. S. 347, 355, 29 Sup. Ct. 511, 53 L. Ed. 826, 16 Ann. Cas. 1047; 1 Oppenheim International Law (3d Ed.) §§ 123-125, 128. It is chiefly applicable to ships on the high seas, where there is no territorial sovereign; and as respects ships in foreign territorial waters it has little application beyond what is affirmatively or tacitly permitted by the local sovereign. 2 Moore International Law Digest, §§ 204, 205; Twiss, Law of Nations (2d Ed.) § 166; Woolsey, International Law (6th Ed.) § 58; 1 Oppenheim International Law (3d Ed.) §§ 128, 146, 260.
'All exceptions, therefore, to the full and complete power of a nation within its own territories, must be traced up to the consent of the nation itself. They can flow from no other legitimate source. * * *
That view has been reaffirmed and applied by this court on several occasions. United States v. Diekelman, 92 U. S. 520, 525, 526, 23 L. Ed. 742; Wildenhus' Case, 120 U. S. 1, 11, 7 Sup. Ct. 385, 30 L. Ed. 565; Nishimura Ekiu v. United States, 142 U. S. 651, 659, 12 Sup. Ct. 336, 35 L. Ed. 1146; Knott v. Botany Mills, 179 U. S. 69, 74, 21 Sup. Ct. 30, 45 L. Ed. 90; Patterson v. Bark Eudora, 190 U. S. 169, 176, 178, 23 Sup. Ct. 821, 47 L. Ed. 1002; Strathearn S. S. Co. v. Dillon, 252 U. S. 348, 355, 356, 40 Sup. Ct. 350, 64 L. Ed. 607. And see Buttfield v. Stranahan, 192 U. S. 470, 492, 493, 24 Sup. Ct. 349, 48 L. Ed. 525; Oceanic Steam Navigation Co. v. Stranahan, 214 U. S. 320, 324, 29 Sup. Ct. 671, 53 L. Ed. 1013; Brolan v. United States, 236 U. S. 216, 218, 35 Sup. Ct. 285, 59 L. Ed. 544. In the Patterson Case the court added:
In principle, therefore, it is settled that the amendment could be made to cover both domestic and foreign merchant ships when within the territorial waters of the United States. And we think it has been made to cover both when within those limits. It contains no exception of ships of either class and the terms in which it is couched indicate that none is intended. Such an exception would tend to embarrass its enforcement and to defeat the attainment of its obvious purpose, and therefore cannot reasonably be regarded as implied.
'Sec. 3. No person2 shall on or after the date when the eighteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States goes into effect, manufacture, sell, barter, transport, import, export, deliver, furnish or possess any intoxicating liquor except as authorized in this act, and all the provisions of this act shall be liberally construed to the end that the use of intoxicating liquor as a beverage may be prevented. * * *'
'Sec. 21. Any room, house, building, boat, vehicle, structure, or place where intoxicating liquor is manufactured, sold, kept, or bartered in violation of this title, and all intoxicating liquor and property kept and used in maintaining the same, is hereby declared to be a common nuisance. * * *'
'Sec. 23. That any person who shall, with intent to effect a sale of liquor, by himself, his employee, servant, or agent, for himself or any person, company or corporation, keep or carry around on his person, or in a vehicle, or other conveyance whatever, * * * any liquor * * * in violation of this title is guilty of a nuisance. * * *'
'Sec. 26. When the commissioner, his assistants, inspectors, or any officer of the law shall discover any person in the act of transporting in violation of the law, intoxicating liquors in any wagon, buggy, automobile, water or air craft, or other vehicle, it shall be his duty to seize any and all intoxicating liquors found therein being transported contrary to law. * * *'
As originally enacted the act did not in terms define its territorial field, but a supplemental provision3 afterwards enacted declares that it 'shall apply not only to the United § ates but to all territory subject to its jurisdiction,' which means that its field coincides with that of the Eighteenth Amendment. There is in the act no provision making it applicable to domestic merchant ships when outside the waters of the United States, nor any provision making it inapplicable to merchant ships, either domestic or foreign, when within those waters, save in the Panama Canal. There is a special provision dealing with the Canal Zone4 which excepts 'liquor in transit through the Panama Canal or on the Panama Railroad.' The exception does not discriminate between domestic and foreign ships, but applies to all liquor in transit through the canal, whether on domestic or foreign ships. Apart from this exception, the provision relating to the Canal Zone is broad and drastic like the others.
Examining the act as a whole, we think it shows very plainly, first, that it is intended to be operative throughout the territorial limits of the United States, with the single exception stated in the Canal Zone provision; secondly, that it is not intended to apply to domestic vessels when outside the territorial waters of the United States; and, thirdly, that it is intended to apply to all merchant vessels, whether foreign or domestic, when within those waters, save as the Panama Canal Zone exception provides otherwise.
In so saying we do not mean to imply that Congress is without power to regulate the conduct of domestic merchant ships when on the high seas, or to exert such control over them when in foreign waters as may be affirmatively or tacitly permitted by the territorial sovereign; for it long has been settled that Congress does have such power over them. Lord v. Steamship Co., 102 U. S. 541, 26 L. Ed. 224; The Abby Dodge, 223 U. S. 166, 176, 32 Sup. Ct. 310, 56 L. Ed. 390. But we do mean that the National Prohibition Act discloses that it is intended only to enforce the Eighteenth Amendment and limits its field of operation, like that of the amendment, to the territorial limits of the United States.
The plaintiffs invite attention to data showing the antiquity of the practice of carrying intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes as part of a ship's sea stores, the wide extent of the practice and its recognition in a congressional enactment, and argue therefrom that neither the amendment nor the act can have been intended to disturb that practice. But in this they fail to recognize that the avowed and obvious purpose of both the amendment and the act was to put an end to prior practices respecting such liquors, even th ugh the practices had the sanction of antiquity, generality and statutory recognition. Like data could be produced and like arguments advanced by many whose business, recognized as lawful theretofore, was shut down or curtailed by the change in national policy. In principle the plaintiffs' situation is not different from that of the innkeeper whose accustomed privilege of selling liquor to his guests is taken away, or that of the dining-car proprietor who is prevented from serving liquor to those who use the cars which he operates to and fro across our northern and southern boundaries.
It should be added that after the adoption of the amendment and the enactment of the National Prohibition Act Congress distinctly withdrew the prior statutory recognition of liquors as legitimate sea stores. The recognition was embodied in section 2775 of the Revised Statutes (Comp. St. § 5471) which was among the provisions dealing with customs administration, and when, by the Act of September 21, 1922, those provisions were revised, that section was expressly repealed along with other provisions recognizing liquors as legitimate cargo. Ch. 356, Title 4 and § 642, 42 Stat. 858, 948, 989. Of course, as was observed by the District Court, the prior recognition, although representing the national policy at the time, was not in the nature of a promise for the future.
It therefore is of no importance that the liquors in the plaintiffs' ships are carried only as sea stores. Being sea stores does not make them liquors any the less; nor does it change the incidents of their use as beverages. But it is of importance that they are carried through the territorial waters of the United States and brought into its ports and harbors. This is prohibited transportation and importation in the sense of the amendment and the act. The recent cases of Grogan v. Walker & Sons and Anchor Line v. Aldridge, 259 U. S. 80, 42 Sup. Ct. 423, 66 L. Ed. 836, 22 A. L. R. 1116, are practically conclusive on the point. The question in one was whether carrying liquor intended as a beverage through the United States from Canada to Mexico was prohibited transportation under the amendment and the act, the liquor being carried in bond by rail, and that in the other was whether the transshipment of such liquor from one British ship to another in the harbor of New York was similarly prohibited, the liquor being in transit from Scotland to Bermuda. The cases were considered together and an affirmative answer was given in each, the court saying in the opinion, 259 U. S. 89, 42 Sup. Ct. 424, 66 L. Ed. 836, 22 A. L. R. 1116.
'The Eighteenth Amendment meant a great revolution in the policy of this country, and presumably and obviously meant to upset a good many things on as well as off the statute book. It did not confine itself in any meticulous way to the use of intoxicants in this country. It forbade export for beverage purposes elsewhere. True this discouraged production here, but that was forbidden already, and the provision applied to liquors already lawfully made. See Hamilton v. Kentucky Distilleries & Warehouse Co., 251 U. S. 146, 151, note 1. It is obvious that those whose wishes and opinions were embodied in the amendment meant to stop the whole business. They did not want intoxicating liquor in the United States and reasonably may have though that if they let it in some of it was likely to stay. When, therefore, the amendment forbids, not only importation into and exportation from the United States, but transportation within it, the natural meaning of the words expresses an altogether probable intent. The Prohibition Act only fortifies in this respect the interpretation of the amendment itself. The manufacture, possession, sale and transportation of spirits and wine for other than beverage purposes are provided for in the act, but there is no provision for transshipment or carriage across the country from without. When Congress was ready to permit such a transit for special reasons, in the Canal Zone, it permitted it in expr §§ words Title III, § 20, 41 Stat. 322.'
Decrees in Nos. 693 and 694, reversed.
The general rule of international law is that a foreign ship is so far identified with the country to which it belongs that its internal affairs, whose effect is confined to the ship, ordinarily are not subjected to interference at the hands of another state in whose ports it is temporarily present, 2 Moore, Int. Law. Dig., p. 292; United States v. Rodgers, 150 U. S. 249, 260, 14 Sup. Ct. 109, 37 L. Ed. 1071; Wildenhus's Case, 120 U. S. 1, 12, 7 Sup. Ct. 385, 30 L. Ed. 565; and, as said by Chief Justice Marshall, in Murray v. Schooner Charming Betsy, 2 Cranch, 64, 118 (2 L. Ed. 208):
'* * * An act of Congress ought never to be construed to violate the law of nations, if any other possible construction remains. * * *'
That the government has full power under the Volstead Act to prevent the landing or transshipment from foreign vessels of intoxicating liquors or their use in our ports is not doubted, and, therefore, it may provide for such assurances and safeguards as it may deem necessary to those ends. Nor do I doubt the power of Congress to do all that the court now holds has been done by that act, but such power exists not under the Eighteenth Amendment, to whose provisions the act is confined, but by virtue of other provisions of the Constitution, which Congress here has not attempted to exercise. With great deference to the contrary conclusion of the court, due regard for the principles of international comity, which exists between friendly nations, in my opinion, forbids the construction of the Eighteenth Amendment and of the act which the present decision advances. Moreover, the Eighteenth Amendment, it must not be forgotten, confers concurrent power of enforcement upon the several states, and it follows that if the general government possesses the power here claimed for it under that amendment, the several states within their respective boundaries, possess the same power. It does not seem possible to me that Congress, in submitting the amendment or the several states in adopting it, could have intended to vest in the various seaboard states a power so intimately connected with our foreign relations and whose exercise might result in international confusion and embarrassment.
The second section says: 'The congress and the several states shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.' For its construction, see United States v. Lanza December 11, 1922).
The act contains a provision (§ 1 of title 2) showing that it uses the word 'persons' as including 'associations, copartnerships and corporations' when the context does not indicate otherwise.
Section 3, Act November 23, 1921, c. 134, 42 Stat. 222.
The pertinent portion of section 20 of Title 3, relating to the Canal Zone, is as follows: