| Ala. | Jan 15, 1867
Lead Opinion
The question to be decided in this case is, whether congress has the power to tax legal proceedings in the State courts. The first clause of the 8th section of the 1st article of the constitution confers on congress the power of taxation, in the following words: “ The congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts, and excises, shall be uniform throughout the United States.” The power thus conferred, though not unlimited, but restricted in terms to specific objects — viz., the payment of the public debts, and providing for the common defense and general welfare — is, nevertheless, “ co-extensive with the powers, wants, and duties of the national government.” Eor the construction of the powers of congress in regard to taxation, see Hylton v. The United States, 3 Dallas, 171; Loughborough v. Blake, 5 Wheat., 317" court="SCOTUS" date_filed="1820-03-10" href="https://app.midpage.ai/document/loughborough-v-blake-6608013?utm_source=webapp" opinion_id="6608013">5 Wheaton, 317; 2 Story on the Constitution, § § 904, 905, 930; 1 Kent’s Com. 254, 267.
Conceding the power of congress over the subject to be as plenary as has ever been claimed for it, yet instruments of the State administration have never been subjected to specific taxation, by way of stamp or license duties, until the passage of the internal-revenue act of June 30, 1864; although, in 1797, congress passed a stamp act, very general in its character, as to the subjects of taxation. — 1 Story’s Laws U. S. 466. The question was then presented, as to the power of congress even to require a license from attorneys to practice in the State courts, it being conceded that it might to practice in the United States courts; and the law then enacted respected, in this regard, the rights of the States.— Warren v. Paul, 4 Am. Law Reg., N. S., 157; 2 Benton’s Debates, 155.
The act of June 30th, 1864, imposes a tax on the right to justice in the State courts, by requiring stamps upon legal documents, as follows: “ Writ, or other original process by which suit is commenced in any court of record, either of law or equity, fifty cents. Where the amount claimed in a writ, issued by a court not of record, is one hundred dollars or over, fifty cents. Upon every confes
It has been the generally received opinion, that the government of the United States is one of special and enumerated powers; that while in the exercise of these powers, for national purposes, it is vested with supremacy, yet the State governments, being in the full possession of all their unsurrendered powers of sovereignty, are, within their sphere of action, likewise supreme; and that the States are to have independent civil and judicial systems of their own, which, if not incompatible with the constitution of the United States, nor with the laws made in pursuance thereof, are not to be encroached upon or controlled by congress, but are to have free and unmolested existence.
The several States having the inherent power to establish and continue in existence judicial tribunals of their own, and the exclusive right to regulate, within the pale of the constitution, the proceedings in such tribunals, no legislation by congress, in derogation of these rights, can be constitutional. That the imposition of the tax on judi
A question, analogous in principle to the one we are considering, was passed upon by the national tribunal of last resort, in the case of McCulloch v. The State of Maryland, 4 Wheaton, 316. In that case, it was held, Chief-Justice Marshall delivering the opinion of the court, that the stock of the United States Bank was exempt from taxation by the States, because of the bank being a constitutional means employed by the government of the Union to execute its constitutional powers. The arguments put forth to sustain this proposition are unanswerable, and apply with equal force to the question involved in the case before us.
In the case cited above, Chief-Justice Marshall announced the following propositions as not to be denied, viz.: “That the power to tax involved the power to destroy; that the power to destroy may defeat and render useless the power to create; that there is a plain repugnance in conferring on one government a power to control the constitutional measures of another, which other, with respect to those very measures, is declared to be supreme over that which exerts the control.” And the same distinguished judge said further: “If the States may tax one instrument, employed by the government in the execution of its powers, they may tax any and every other instrument. They may tax the mail; they may tax the mint; they may tax patent rights ; they may tax the papers of the custom-house; they may tax judicial process ; they may tax all the means employed by the government, to an excess which would defeat all the ends of government.”
The power of taxation remains in the States, concurrent and co-extensive with that of congress; with the sole exception of duties on imports and exports, which the States can not impose except by the consent of congress. — 2 Story on Con. § 937. Therefore, congress has no more the power to tax judicial process of the State courts, than have the . States to tax judicial process of the national courts.
Our conclusion as to the constitutionality of the tax in question, is sustained by able authority, direct to the point. In a late number of the American Law Eegister, (vol. 4th, p. 166,) Judge Eedfield, late chief-justice of the supreme court of Yermont, and eminent as a profound jurist, says: “It has seemed to us most unquestionable, from the very first, that congress could not impose a specific tax of any kind upon any of the indispensable governmental functions of the States, whether by way of license to the attorneys and counsellors practicing in State courts, or stamp duties upon their processes.” Judicial determinations, too, of the identical question involved, in harmony with our own conclusion, have recently been made by the supreme courts of several of the States; but to the official reports of the cases we have not had access. And should the question ever come before the supreme court of the Union, we believe these State adjudications will be sustained by that shield of the constitution.
It should be an object of the first importance to preserve, free and untrammelled, the jurisprudence of the several States. As Chancellor Kent has said : “The judicial power of the United States is necessarily limited to national ob
Let the judgment of the circuit court be affirmed.
Concurrence Opinion
I concur in the result of the opinion of the court, but by a very different line of argument from the one taken therein. I do not assent to all the reasoning of the opinion, but deem it unnecessary to point out and discuss such portions as I do not approve. I am content to say that, admitting, for the sake of the argument, that the stamp act, if applicable to process of the State courts, would be unconstitutional, yet there is a rule of law which requires that courts should never impute to the legislative department of the government an intention to violate the constitution, nor even a violation of it, when any reasonable construction can be given to its enactments without producing such a result.
The language of the act, I admit, is very general; but, in my opinion, it can be legitimately interpreted as only applicable to process issued by the courts of the United States, held in the States, the territories, and the District of Columbia, as also to such issued by the justices and police courts of the latter. In a form of government like ours, where there are two — the State and national — legislative bodies clothed with sovereign powers, the enactments of neither should ever be held to affect the other, or any department of the other, unless the act expressly does so. It should never be done by implication, and especially if, in doing so,