Court Opinion

ID: 9416455
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 19:45:30.806283+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:21:27.372485
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice DANIEL
dissented
From the decision of the court pronounced in these causes, I feel myself constrained to dissent. The rule heretofore- announced and uniformly'observed by this court, with respect to the construction to be given to the constitutions and. statutes of the several States, has been this : — that the. interpretations put upon those constitutions and statutes by the supreme tribunals of the States respectively, should be received and followed as the true interpretation. This rule, so reasonable in itself, so inseparable from every idea of the competency, or indeed the very being of the systems of winch those constitutions and statutes make an essential part, is not even now denied; but’whilst it is, in general terms, assented to in the decision of these causes, it is in effect, if not in terms, by thq same decision utterly overthrown. In the case of Groves et al. v. Slaughter, 15 Peters, 449, this, court, as.it was constrained to do in the absence of any interpretation by the State courts, gave its. own construction to the constitution of Mississippi. Since the decision in Groves v. Slaughter, decisions of the Supreme Court of Mississippi, giving an interpretation to the constitution of that State, have become gener- . ally known,— they are. familiar, unequivocal, uniform, numerous. That any or all of these expositions may have been made posterior to'the decision of-the cause of Grov.es v. Slaughter, I hold to be perfectly immaterial, so far as this circumstance can affect their force and validity. If these expositions establish the meaning of the constitution, of Mississippi, such meaning, must have relation to the period of the consummation- of that instrument. The constitution has always been the same thing from the time of its- adoption. It could not have been some other thing than the constitution, because it'had-not been interpreted ■ to this court, and subsequently have become the constitution merely because its interpretation was then generally declared, The decision of. the causes now before this court gives'to the constitution of Mississippi different meanings •at different periods of its existence, and deduces those meanings from circumstances wholly unconnected with the intrinsic signification of the terms of the instrument itself. Such a rule of. interpretation involves, in my view, a contradiction which I am wholly ..unwilling to adopt.

Order.

This cause came on to.be heard on the transcript of the record from the Circuit.Court of the United States.for the Southern District of Mississippi, and- was argued by counsel. On consideration whereof, it is ordered and adjudged' by this court, that the judgment *141of the said Circuit Court in this cause bé and the same is hereby reversed, with costs, and that this cause be and the same is-hereby remanded to the said Circuit Court, with directions to award a venire facias de novo.