Court Opinion

ID: 9418150
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:10:24.213659+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:15:59.963091
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Holmes,
dissenting.
For the purpose of excluding those who unlawfully enter this country Congress has power' to retain control oyer aliens long enough to make sure of the facts. Yamataya v. Fisher (Japanese Immigrant Case), 189 U. S. 86. To this end it may make their admission conditional for three years. Pearson v. Williams, 202 U. S. 281. If the ground of exclusion is their calling, practice of it within a short time after arrival is or may be made evidence of what it was when they came in. Such retrospective presumptions are not always contrary to experience or unknown to the law. Bailey v. Alabama, 211 U. S. 452, 454. If a woman were found living in a house of prostitution within a week of her arrival, no one, I suppose, would doubt that it tended to show that she was in the business when she arrived. But how far. back such an inference shall reach is a question of degree like most of the questions of life. And, while a period of three.years seems to be long, I am not prepared to say, against the judgment of Congress, that it is too long.
The statute does not state the legal theory upon which it was enacted.. If the ground is that which I have suggested, it is fair *150to observe that the presumption that it creates is not open to rebuttal. I should be prepared to accept even that, however, in view of the difficulty of proof in such cases. Statutes of which the justification must be the same ar§ familiar in the States. For instance, one creating the offense'of being present when gaming implements are found, Commonwealth v. Smith, 166 Massachusetts, 370, 375, 376, or punishing the sale of intoxicating liquors without regard to knowledge of their intoxicating quality, Commonwealth v. Hallett, 103 Massachusetts, 452, or throwing upon a seducer the risk of the woman turning out to be married or under a certain age. Commonwealth v. Elwell, 2 Met. 190; Reg. v. Prince, L. R. 2 C. C. 154. It is true that in such instances the legislature has power to change the substantive law of crimes, and it has been thought that when it is said to create a conclusive presumption as to a really disputable fact, the proper mode of stating what it does, at least as a general rule, is to say that it has changed the substantive law. 2AWigmore, Ev., §§ 1353 ef seq. This may be admitted without denying that considerations of evidence .are what lead to the change. And if it should be thought more philosophical to express this law in substantive terms, I think that Congress may require, as a condition of the right to remain, good behavior for a certain time, in matters deemed by it important to the public welfare and of a kind that indicates a preexisting habit that would have excluded the party if it had been known. Therefore I am of opinion that it is within the power of Congress to order the deportation of a woman found practicing prostitution within three years.
If Congress can forbid the entry and order the subsequent deportation of professional prostitutes, it can punish those who cooperate in their fraudulent entry. “If Congress has power to exclude such* laborers ... it has the power to punish any who assist in their introduction.” That was a point decided in Lees v. United States, 150 U. S. 476, 4807 The same power must exist as to cooperation in an equally unlawful stay. The indictment sets forth the facts that constitute such cooperation *151and need not allege the conclusion of law. On the principle of the cases last cited, in order to make its prohibition effective the law can throw the burden of finding out the fact and date of a prostitute’s arrival from another country upon those who harbor her for a purpose that presumably they know in any event to be contrary to law.' Therefore, while I have admitted that the time fixed seems to me to be long, I can see no other constitutional objection to the act, and, as I have said, I think that that one ought not to prevail-
Mr. Justice Harlan and Mr. Justice Moody concur in this dissent.