Court Opinion

ID: 9418316
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:20:55.184507+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:00.833448
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Clarke,
dissenting:
I greatly regret that I cannot concur in the decision just announced. The opinion of the majority of the court plainly regards the act of the legislature of the State of Michigan, extending the corporate limits of the City of Detroit, as a valid law, passed'in the exercise of an undoubted power in the legislature to deal as it does with, the municipal corporations of that State, and its validity for the purposes for which it was intended is not questioned. . It will remain a valid law after this decision as it was before. In substance the decision of this court is that the Supreme Court of Michigan, in deciding that there is an implied condition in the contract between the City of Detroit and the railway company that the rates of fare therein provided for shall apply within the city limits when extended, and in requiring the railway company to accept the same fares throughout the new city limits as were accepted throughout the former limits, gives an effect to the extension act which impairs the railway company’s contract with the city. I am of the opinion-that for the state Supreme Court thus to interpret the terms of the contract of the railway company with the city is not to give an effect to the valid extension act of the legislature which violates the provision of the Constitution prohibiting a State from passing any “law impairing the obligation of contracts.” The passing of the valid extension act merely created a situation under which the implied condition, éxisting in the fare,contract from its *255beginning, finds an application to the new territory. This is giving effect not to the terms of the act of the legislature but to the terms of the contract with the city, and the most that can be said against the decision of the Supreme • Court of Michigan is that it gives an erroneous construction to the contract. But since it is settled by many decisions of this court that the contract clause of the Federal Constitution does not protect contracts against impair•ment by the decisions of courts except where such deei-. sions give effect to constitutions adopted or laws passed subsequent to the date of such contracts (Cross Lake Shooting and Fishing Club v. Louisiana, 224 U. S. 632), I am of opinion that there is no federal question before this court in this case and that the writ of error should be dismissed. This- is a high and delicate power which the court is exercising in this case and it should be resorted to only in cases which are clear, and, for the reasons thus briefly stated, I am convinced that this is not such a case.
I am authorized to state that Mr. Justice Brandéis concurs in this dissent.