Court Opinion

ID: 6877220
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-23 21:09:29.33293+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:05:31.069556
License: Public Domain

WOODROUGH, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) .
The appellant herein relies upon a judgment rendered by the District Court in a bankruptcy case during the interim between the time the Congress enacted the municipal corporations amendment to the Bankruptcy Act and the time the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. The question is, during that interim what was the state of our government in respect to that legislation? I assume that as to the acts of the Executive branch of the government founded thereon, they simply lost the sanction of the law when the law was held invalid. Probably the same is true as to administrative or quasi-judiejal bodies. But it seems to me that our duly constituted courts, sitting in the various districts and circuits throughout the nation, functioning in equity, law or bankruptcy, remained clothed with judicial power, including the power to pass on the constitutionality of the law and that their solemn judgments in all cases, including bankruptcy cases, ought to be given full faith and credit unless appealed from and reversed. The amendment to the Bankruptcy Act affected very large property rights. I think it ought not to be held that there was a hiatus of govern- ' mental power in respect to them, or that the Supreme Court decision annulling the amendment operated retroactively to render void the final unappealed from judgments of all the courts that had passed on the amendment and adjudicated rights between litigants in respect to it. It ought to be held that government by law is continuous at least in the courts of the nation.