maintained heretofore, has ceased to have any purpose or effect, and that many other Supreme Court decisions are likewise overruled. And this is particularly true from Judge Hazel's conclusion that if any things can properly be defined as "necessaries," in which of course the public has an interest, "the Lever Act does not deprive any one of his property without due process of law, it merely limiting the rate of charge for dealing in or with any necessaries." "For the foregoing reasons," he says, "I am of the opinion that this Court ought not to declare unconstitutional the provision to which exception is taken by the defendant."[1] In other words, the decision in the case, if it be correctly understood, would lead to the conclusion that the Judges have been continually in error, at least from the time of Lord Chief Justice Coke, who it will be remembered said,[2] "for what is the land but the profits thereof," to the case of Cleveland vs. Backus[3]
- ↑ Weed & Co. vs. Lockwood, 264 Fed. Rep. 453 (see page 456). 1920.
- ↑ Littleton, 4 b.
- ↑ The Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Paul Railway Company vs. Backus, 154 U. S. 439. 1894.
presented is not whether the United States has the power to condemn and appropriate this property of the Monongahela Company, for that is conceded, but how much it must pay as compensation therefor. Obviously, this question, as all others which run along the line or the extent of the protection the individual has under the Constitution against the demands of the government, is of importance; for in any society the fullness and sufficiency of the securities which surround the individual in the use and enjoyment of his property constitute one of the most certain tests of the character and value of the government. The first ten amendments to the Constitution, adopted as they were soon after the adoption of the Constitution, are in the nature of a bill of rights, and were adopted in order to quiet the apprehensions of many, that without some such declaration of rights the government would assume, and might be held to possess, the power to trespass upon those rights of persons and property which by the Declaration of Independence were affirmed to be unalienable rights."
