Court Opinion

ID: 9416935
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 19:58:40.221958+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:18:55.526222
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice BRADLEY,
concurring:
Whilst I concur in the conclusion to which the court has arrived in this case, I think it proper to state briefly and explicitly the grounds on which I distinguish it from the Slaughter-House Cases, which were argued at the same time. I prefer to do this in order that there may be no misapprehension of the views which I entertain in regard to the application of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution.
This was a prosecution for selling intoxicating liquor, in Iowa, contrary to a law of that State which prohibits the sale of such liquor. The defendant pleaded that he was the lawful owner of the liquor in Iowa and a citizen of the United States prior to the day on which the law was passed, being chapter sixty-four of the revision of 1860. Judgment *136was given against the defendant on his plea. The truth is, that the law in question was originally passed in 1851 and was incorporated into the revision of 1860, in the chapter referred to in the plea. Whether the plea meant to assert that the defendant owned the liquor prior to the passage of the original law, or only prior to its re-enactment in the revision, is doubtful, and, being doubtful, it must be interpreted most strongly against the pleader. It amounts, therefore, only to an allegation that the defendant became owner of the liquor at a time when it was unlawful to sell it in Iowa. The law, therefore, was not in this ease an invasion of property existing at the date of its passage, and the question of depriving a person of property without due process of law does not arise. No one has ever doubted that a legislature may prohibit the vending of articles deemed injurious to the safety of society, provided it -does not interfere with vested rights of property. When such rights stand in the way of the public good they can be removed by awarding compensation to the owner. -When they are not in question, the claim of a right to sell a prohibited article cau never be deemed one of the privileges aud immunities of the citizen. It is tolo codo different from the right not to be deprived of property without due process of law, or the right to pursue such lawful avocation as a man chooses to adopt, unrestricted by tyrannical and corrupt monopolies. By that portion of the fourteenth amendment by which no State may make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges aud immunities of citizens of the United States, or take life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, it has now become the fundamental law of this country that life, liberty, and property (which include “the pursuit of happiness”) are sacred rights, which the Constitution of the United States guarantees to its humblest citizen against oppressive legislation, whether national or local, so that he cannot be deprived of them without due process of law. The monopoly created by the legislature of Louisiana, which was under consideration in the SlaughterHouse Cases, was, in my judgment, legislation of this sort *137and obnoxious to this objection. But police regulations, intended for the preservation of the public health and the public order, are of an entirely different character. So much of the Louisiana law as partook of this character was never objected to. It was the unconscionable monopoly, of which the police regulation was a mere pretext, that was deemed by the dissenting members of the court an invasion of the right of the citizen to pursue his lawful calling. A claim of right to pursue an unlawful calling stands on very different grounds, occupying the same platform as does a claim of right to disregard license law's and to usurp public franchises. It is greatly to be regretted, as it seems to me, that this distinction was lost sight of (as I think it was) in the decision of the court' referred to.
I am authorized to say that Justices Swayne and Field concur in this opinion,