Court Opinion

ID: 9841759
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-22 20:04:59.44458+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:04:40.516328
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Harlan
dissenting.
In Ford v. Surget, 97 U. S. 574, 605, this court, speaking by the writer of this opinion, said that to the Confederate army was “ conceded, in the interest of humanity, and to prevent the cruelties of reprisals and retaliation, such belligerent rights as belonged under the laws of nations to the armies of independent governments engaged in war against each other — that concession placing the soldiers and officers of the rebel army, as to all matters directly connected with the mode of prosecuting the war, ‘ on the footing of those engaged in lawful war,’ and exempting ‘ them from liability for acts of legitimate warfare.’ ” It necessarily results from this doctrine, without reference to the provision of the Constitution of West Virginia, that Williams was not civilly responsible for the value of the cattle in question, if, at the time he took them, he was regularly enlisted as a soldier in the Confederate army, and if -his taking of them was consistent with the usages of civilized warfare.” If the taking was not an act of war, but a mere trespass, his being a soldier in the Confederate army would not have constituted a defence. But whether he was or was not a soldier in that army, and whether his act was or was not one of legitimate warfare, were questions determinable in the action of trespass instituted against him in the Circuit Court of Preston County. It is not disputed that it was open to him, in that action, to prove every fact relied upon in the present suit as establishing immunity from civil responsibility for the taking of Freeland’s cattle. There was a verdict and judgment against him, and that judgment, upon writ of error to the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, was affirmed in 1867. No writ of error was prosecuted to this court.
*422If the taking of the cattle was illegal, the right to recover from the wrongdoer their reasonable • value was an absolute one, of which the owner could' not be deprived by a legislative enactment, of the State, or by an amendment of its constitution. The judgment obtained by Freeland was an adjudication that the taking was illegal. He acquired by that judgment a vested right to have and demand the amount named in it, as well as the benefit of such remedies as the law gav.e for the enforcement of personal judgments for money. The judgment was, therefore, property of which the State could not deprive him, except by due process of law.' And a constitutional provision, subsequently enacted, declaring that the defendant’s property should not be seized or sold under final process on such judgment, is not due process of law. I cannot agree that a State may, by an amendment of its fundamental law, prevent a citizen from recovering the value of property, of which, according to the final judgment of its own courts, he has been illegally deprived by a mere trespasser. That would be sheer spoliation under the forms of law. If the amendment in question had, in terms, given the defendant a right to a new trial of the action of trespass in the same court, after the time had passed within wlTich, according to the settled modes of procedure, he could, of right, apply for a new trial, it would have accomplished, in respect to the judgment against him, precisely what, in effect, has been held in this case to be consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment.
The present case is unlike Louisiana, v. Mayor of New Orleans, 109 U. S. 285, 290, where the court sustained the validity, so far as the Constitution of the United States was concerned, of a state enactment so changing the laws for raising money by municipal taxation as to prevent, for the timé, the enforcement of a judgment obtained against the city of New Orleans, for damages done to private property by a mob. But, even in that oase, the court was careful to say that the relator was not deprived of his judgment, or of the right of himself or assignee to use it as a set-off against any demands of the city, ít is, also, said: “ The question of the effect of legislation upon the means of enforcing an ordinary judgment for damages for *423a tort rendered against the person committing it, in favor of the person injured, may involve other considerations, and is not presented by the case before us.” The radical difference between that and the present case is, that the right to sue the city of New Orleans for damages on account of private property destroyed by a mob was given by statute; whereas, the right to .claim compensation from a wrongdoer for his illegal conversion of private property to his own use is inherent in the owner, and cannot be taken from him by the State.
Nor, in my opinion, is the ruling in the present case sustained by Dow v. Johnson, 100 U. S. 158, 166. That was an action in the Circuit Court'of the United States for the District of Maine, upon a judgment rendered by default in 1863 against General Dow while he was in the active discharge, within the lines of military operations, of his duties as a brigadier-general in the army of the United States. The judgment was rendered in a court of the city and parish of New Orleans. That officer was sued in the latter court for the taking of certain personal; property by soldiers under his command. He was served with process, but did not appear and make defence. “ The condition of New Orleans,” this court said, “and of the district connected with it, at the time of the seizure of the property of the plaintiff and the entry of judgment against Dow, was not that of a country restored to its normal relations to the Union, by the fact that they had been captured by our forces, and were held in subjection. . . . The country was under martial law, and its armed occupation gave nq jurisdiction to the civil tribunals over the officers and soldiers of the occupying army. They were not to be harassed and mulcted at the complaint of any person aggrieved by their action. The jurisdiction which the District Court was authorized to exercise over civil causes between parties, by the proclamation of General Butler, did not extend to cases against them. The third special plea alleges that the court was deprived by the general government of all jurisdiction .except such 'as was conferred by the commanding general, and that no jurisdiction over persons in the military service for acts performed in the line of their duty was ever thus conferred upon it. It was not for their *424control in any way, or the settlement of complaints against them, that the court was allowed to continue in existence. It was, as already stated, for the protection and benefit of the inhabitants of the conquered country and others there not engaged in the military service.” General Dow, when thus sued in a local tribunal, existing by military sufferance in a country governed by martial law, was not bound, as this court said, to leave his troops and attend upon that tribunal, for the purpose of justifying his military orders, by showing that the acts complained of were authorized by the necessities of war. It was consequently held that the New (Means court was without jurisdiction to proceed against him. There is no analogy between that case and the present one; for, the action of trespass against Williams was brought in a Superior Court of general jurisdiction, after the war closed, and when he was at liberty to appear and make defence. And it was determined by a court whose existence was independent of military authority.
The only possible ground upon which the judgment below can be sustained, consistently with the law of the land, is to hold that no court of any State had jurisdiction, in the year 1867, even with the parties before it, to inquire, in an action of trespass, whether an alleged taking of the private property of a citizen was a mere trespass, or was an act of war upon the part of the defendant, a Confederate soldi'er, and to give judgment according to the result of that inquiry.
But as the primary object in creating judicial tribunals is to provide a mode for the determination of controversies between individuals, and between individuals and the government, can it be said that no court had jurisdiction to inquire whether Freeland’s cattle were taken by Williams without authority of law % Was the mere averment that the latter was a Confederate soldier, and that what he did was an act of war, sufficient to preclude all investigation as to the truth -of that averment ? If not, how was such an investigation to be had. in any effective mode, except in a court of justice % It is suggested that when the Preston Circuit Court ascertained that the taking of these cattle was legitimate warfare upon the part of Williams as a Confederate soldier, it ought to have dis*425missed the action, or directed a verdict to be rendered in his favor. But even if it erred in this respect, the judgment was not void. Its error, if any there was, could have been corrected in an appellate court. The affirmance of the judgment by the highest court of the state is to be taken as conclusive that no error was committed by the inferior state court in respect to any matter put in issue, or which was embraced by the • issue tried. So if Williams failed to prove, under his plea of not guilty, that he was a Confederate soldier, and that his taking the cattle was an act of legitimate warfare, it was not in the power of the State, by an amendment of its constitution, and after a final judgment against him, to give a new trial. In legal effect, that is what was done.
According to the doctrines announced by the court, if the present and similar suits in West Yirginia had been decided adversely to the several defendants therein, and such decisions had been affirmed by the highest court of that State, it would be consistent with “ due process of law ” for the people of that State to make- a further amendment of their constitution, and give the unsuccessful litigants still another opportunity to retry the very questions of law and fact determined against them in previous actions. And so on, indefinitely, until the alleged trespasser obtained a decision in his favor. I had supposed that a final judgment, and the right of the party in whose behalf it was rendered to have the benefit of it,- rested upon a firmer basis than the popular will, expressed either in a constitutional amendment or in a legislative enactment.
Without considering whether the judgment obtained by Freeland is not “ a contract of the highest nature, being established by the sentence of a court of judicature,” (2 Bl. 465 ; Taylor v. Root, 4 Keyes, 335, 344,) I place my dissent from the opinion and judgment in this case upon the ground that the state court, in the action of trespass, had jurisdiction as to person and subject matter, and that the constitutional amendment of 1872 taking from Freeland, upon the identical grounds involved in that action, the benefit of his judgment against the defendant, after it had been affirmed in the highest court of the State, deprived the former of his property without due process of law,