2 S.D. 568 | S.D. | 1892
The facts in this case are unimportant, as there is presented the single legal question, is a national bank subject to indictment, trial, and punishment for a violation of the state law which makes the receiving of a greater rate of interest than is allowed by law a misdemeanor? Plaintiff in error was so indicted and convicted, and alleges error in that the state court had no jurisdiction.
At the outset it was stated by counsel that no adjudication had been found upon this precise question. The counsel for the state quoted, and to some extent relied upon, Section 4, Chapter 866, U. S. St. 1888, providing “that all national banking associations established under the laws of the United States shall, for the purposes of all actions by or against them, real, personal, or mixed, and all suits in equity, be deemed citizens of Ihe states in which they are respectively located; and in such cases the circuit and district courts shall not have jurisdiction other than such as they would have in cases between individual citizens of the same state.” But there is nothing in the language of this section to indicate that it refers to any other than civil actions and proceedings. Indeed, it is clear that it refers only to such. It evidently was not intended to give the state courts jurisdiction to try criminal offenses created by the national bank act. If such jurisdiction exist, it must be found elsewhere. Counsel for plaintiff in error maintains his argument of no jurisdiction upon three propositions; “First. The state cannot exercise its criminal jurisdiction over a creature having its origin from the national will, .as evinced by the acts of congress. Second. As against the national will, the state has no power, by taxation or otherwise, to retard, im
The first proposition of plaintiff in error declares the total freedom frow responsibility to state criminal laws of ‘ ‘every creature having its origin from the national will, as evinced by the acts of congress. ” It would require but little examination to demonstrate that this proposition cannot be maintained without material qualification. It is agreed that plaintiff in error is “a creature having its origin from the national will,” towit, a national bank, authorized by and organized under the acts of congress; but it could not, without criminal liability under state laws, which nobody would question, erect its banking-house across the street in the city of Clark. It is to broadly stated to say that a national bank, because created under and by authority of congress, is entirely independent of all police authority of the state. It is doubtless true that whatever congress has authorized it to do it must be allowed to do without inter
The second proposition — that, “as against the natioúal will, the state has no power, by taxation or otherwise, to retard, impede, burden, or in any manner control the operation of the constitutional laws of congress” — would not be questioned in any court; but it does not appear to us, for reasons already noticed, that the state law under consideration does 1 ‘retard, impede, burden, or in any manner control the operation of the constitutional laws of congress. ”
The third proposition is “that a state can only exercise control over institutions whose creation eminated from national authority to the extent that congress permits.” The correctness of this proposition may be fully recognized, and still leave open and unanswered the really vital question in this case. Has congress in any manner indicated its willingness or its unwillingness to permit the state to make the taking of unlawful interest by a national. bank a misdemeanor, and punish it as such? The constitution of the United States declares that that constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be passed in pursuance thereof, shall be the supreme law of the land. The act of Congress under which plaintiff: in error was organized as a national bank is in pursuance of the constitution, and such bank must be recognized and treated as an ‘ ‘instrument designed to be used to aid the government in an important branch of the pub-