Court Opinion

ID: 3823171
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2016-07-06 07:57:15.555388+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:42:56.936195
License: Public Domain

"No tribunal or person can exercise authority involving life or liberty, in any territory of the United States, organized or unorganized, except in harmony with the Constitution. Congress cannot suspend the operation of the Constitution in any territory after it has come under the sovereign authority of the United States, nor, by any affirmative enactment, or by mere nonaction, can Congress prevent the Constitution from being the supreme law for any peoples subject to the jurisdiction *Page 553 
of the United States. The power conferred upon Congress to make needful rules and regulations respecting the territories of the United States does not authorize Congress to make any rule or regulation inconsistent with the Constitution or violative of any right secured by that instrument. The proposition that a people subject to the full authority of the United States for purposes of government, may, under any circumstances, or for any period of time, long or short, be governed, as Congress pleases to ordain, without regard to the Constitution, is, in my judgment, inconsistent with the whole theory of our institutions. If the Constitution does not become the supreme law in a territory acquired by treaty, and whose inhabitants are under the dominion of the United States, until Congress, in some distinct form, shall have expressed its will to that effect, it would necessarily follow that, by positive enactment, or simply by nonaction, Congress, under the theory of `incorporation,' and although a mere creature of the Constitution, could forever withhold from the inhabitants of such territory the benefit of the guaranties of life, liberty, and property as set forth in the Constitution. I cannot assent to any such doctrine. I cannot agree that the supremacy of the Constitution depends upon the will of Congress. As these are my views upon the underlying questions presented by the record, I cannot concur in all the reasoning in the opinion of the court. But I entirely concur in the judgment holding the act of Congress in question to be void. I do so, not upon the ground that Alaska had been previously `incorporated' into the United States by the legislation of Congress, but upon the ground that the right of the accused to a trial by the jury of the Constitution became complete immediately upon the acquisition of Alaska by treaty, and before any legislation upon the subject by Congress — indeed, without any power in Congress to add to or impair or destroy that right."