page_title: Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co.
section_title: Headnote
hierarchical_section_title: Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. / Facts / Headnote
caption_attribution_description: John Chandler Bancroft Davis, Assistant Secretary of State, Minister to Germany, and Reporter of the U.S. Supreme Court.
context_page_description: Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 118 U.S. 394, is a corporate law case of the United States Supreme Court concerning taxation of railroad properties. The case is most notable for a headnote stating that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment grants constitutional protections to corporations.
  The case arose when several railroads refused to follow a California state law that gave less favorable tax treatment to some assets owned by corporations as compared to assets owned by individuals. Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan's majority opinion held for the railroads, but his opinion did not address the Equal Protection Clause. However, a headnote written by the court reporter and approved by Chief Justice Morrison Waite stated that the Supreme Court justices unanimously believed that the Equal Protection Clause did grant constitutional protections to corporations. The headnote represented the first time that the Supreme Court indicated that the Equal Protection Clause granted constitutional protections to corporations as well as to natural persons, although the Court's opinions in earlier cases such as Dartmouth College v.
context_section_description: The headnote, which is "not the work of the Court, but is simply the work of the Reporter, giving his understanding of the decision, prepared for the convenience of the profession", was written by the court reporter, former president of the Newburgh and New York Railway Company J.C. Bancroft Davis. He said the following:
  One of the points made and discussed at length in the brief of counsel for defendants in error was that 'corporations are persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.' Before argument, Mr. Chief Justice Waite said: The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does.
  So the headnote was a reporting by the Court Reporter of the Chief Justice's interpretation of the Justices' opinions. But the issue of applicability of "Equal Protection to any persons" to the railroads was not addressed in the decision of the Court in the case.
  Before publication in United States Reports, Davis wrote a letter to Chief Justice Morrison Waite, dated May 26, 1886, to make sure his headnote was correct:
  Dear Chief Justice,
  I have a memorandum in the California Cases Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific &c
  As follows. In opening the Court stated that it did not wish to hear argument on the question whether the Fourteenth Amendment applies to such corporations as are parties in these suits. All the Judges were of the opinion that it does.
  Waite replied:
  I think your mem. in the California Railroad Tax cases expresses with sufficient accuracy what was said before the argument began. I leave it with you to determine whether anything need be said about it in the report inasmuch as we avoided meeting the constitutional question in the decision.
  C. Peter Magrath, who discovered the exchange while researching Morrison R. Waite: The Triumph of Character, writes "In other words, to the Reporter fell the decision which enshrined the declaration in the United States Reports...had Davis left it out, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pac. R. Co. would have been lost to history among thousands of uninteresting tax cases." At the same time, the correspondence makes clear that the headnote does reflect the Court's thinking, at least before hearing any arguments to the contrary.
  Author Jack Beatty wrote about the lingering questions as to how the reporter's note reflected a quotation that was absent from the opinion itself.
  Why did the chief justice issue his dictum? Why did he leave it up to Davis to include it in the headnotes? After Waite told him that the Court 'avoided' the issue of corporate personhood, why did Davis include it? Why, indeed, did he begin his headnote with it? The opinion made plain that the Court did not decide the corporate personality issue and the subsidiary equal protection issue.
caption: Bancroft Davis, the Court Reporter and former president of Newburgh and New York Railway
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