Sinking-Fund Cases/Dissent Bradley

by Joseph P. Bradley

United States Supreme Court

99 U.S. 700

Sinking-Fund Cases

MR. JUSTICE BRADLEY.

I am unable to concur in the judgment of the court in these cases, and will very briefly state the grounds of my dissent.

I think that Congress had no power to pass the act of May 7, 1878, either as it regards the Union Pacific or the Central Pacific Railroad Company. The power of Congress, even over those subjects upon which it has the right to legislate, is not despotic, but is subject to certain constitutional limitations. One of these is, that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; another is, that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation; and a third is, that the judicial power of the United States is vested in the supreme and inferior courts, and not in Congress. It seems to me that the law in question is violative of all these restrictions,-of their spirit at least, if not of their letter; and a law which violates the spirit of the Constitution is as much unconstitutional as one that violates its letter. For example, although the Constitution declares only that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation, and does not expressly declare that it shall not be taken for private use without compensation, or, in other words, does not declare that the property of one person shall not be taken from him and given to another without compensation, yet no one can reasonably doubt that a law which should do this would be unconstitutional, because the prohibition to do it is within the spirit of the prohibition that is given, it being the greater enormity of the two.

The contract between the Union and Central Pacific Railroad Companies and the government was an executed contract, and a definite one. It was in effect this: that the government should loan the companies certain moneys, and that the companies should have a certain period of time to repay the amount, the loan resting on the security of the companies' works. Congress, by the law in question, without any change of circumstances, and against the protest of the companies, declares that the money shall be paid at an earlier day, and that the contract shall be changed pro tanto. This is the substance and effect of the law. Calling the money paid a sinking-fund makes no substantial difference. The pretence or excuse for the law is that the stipulated security is not good. Congress takes up the question, ex parte, discusses and decides it, passes judgment, and proposes to issue execution, and to subject the companies to heavy penalties if they do not comply. That is the plain English of the law. In view of the limitations referred to, has Congress the power to do this? In my judgment it has not. The law virtually deprives the companies of their property without due process of law; takes it for public use without compensation; and operates as an exercise by Congress of the judicial power of the government.

That it is a plain and flat violation of the contract there can be no reasonable doubt. But it is said that Congress is not subject to any inhibition against passing laws impairing the validity of contracts. This is true; and the reason why the inhibition to that effect was imposed upon the States and not upon Congress evidently was, that the power to pass bankrupt laws should be exclusively vested in Congress, in order that the bankruptcy system might be uniform throughout the United States. When the States exercised the power, they often did it in such a manner as to favor their own citizens at the expense of the citizens of other States and of foreign countries. It was deemed expedient, therefore, to take the power from the States so far as it might involve the impairing the validity of contracts. State bankrupt laws, since the Constitution went into effect, have only been sustained when operating prospectively upon contracts, and then only in the absence of a national law. The inhibition referred to undoubtedly had its origin in these considerations. It fully explains the fact that no such inhibition was laid upon the national egislature; and the absence of such an inhibition, therefore, furnishes no ground of argument in favor of the proposition that Congress may pass arbitrary and despotic laws with regard to contracts any more than with regard to any other subject-matter of legislation. The limitations already quoted exist in their full force, and apply to that subject as well as to all others. They embody the essential principles of Magna Charta, and are especially binding upon the legislative department of the government. Under the English Constitution, notwithstanding the theoretical omnipotence of Parliament, such a law as the one in question would not be tolerated for a moment. The famous denunciation that 'it would cut every Englishman to the bone,' would be promptly reiterated.

It will not do to say that the violation of the contract by the law in question is not a taking of property. In the first place, it is literally a taking of property. It compels the companies to pay over to the government, or its agents, money to which the government is not entitled. That it will be entitled by the contract to a like amount at some future time does not matter. Time is a part of the contract. To coerce a delivery of the money is to coerce without right a delivery of that which is not the property of the government, but the property of the companies. It is needless to refer to the importance to the companies of the time which the contract gives. If it be alleged that the security of the government requires this to be done in consequence of waste of dissipation by the companies of the mortgage security, that is a question to be decided by judicial investigation with opportunity of defence. A prejudgment of the question by the Legislative Department is a usurpation of the judicial power.

But if it were not, as it is, an actual or physical taking of property,-if it were merely the subversion of the contract and the substitution of another contract in its place, it would be a taking of property within the spirit of the constitutional provisions. A contract is property. To destroy it wholly or to destroy it partially is to take it; and to do this by arbitrary legislative action is to do it without due process of law.

The case bears no analogy to the laws which were passed in time of war and public necessity, making treasury notes of the government a legal tender. The power to pass those laws was found in other parts of the Constitution: in the power to borrow money on the credit of the United States, to regulate the value of money, to raise and support armies, to suppress insurrections, and to pass all laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution the general powers of the government. My views on that subject were fully expressed in the Legal-Tender Cases, reported in 11 Wallace, and I have yet seen no reason to modify them. The legal-tender laws may have indirectly affected contracts, but did not abrogate them. The case before us is totally different. It is a direct abrogation of a contract, and that, too, of a contract of the government itself,-a repudiation of its own contract.

Nor does the case in hand bear any analogy to what are familiarly known as the Granger Cases, reported in 94 U.S. under the names of Munn v. Illinois, &c. The inquiry there was as to the extent of the police power in cases where the public interest is affected; and we held that when an employment or business becomes a matter of such public interest and importance as to create a common charge or burden upon the citizen; in other words, when it becomes a practical monopoly, to which the citizen is compelled to resort, and by means of which a tribute can be exacted from the community, it is subject to regulation by the legislative power. It is obvious that the present case does not belong to that category. It is an individual case of private contract between the companies and the government. It is a question of dollars and cents, and terms and conditions, in a particular case. To call the law an exercise of the police power would be a misuse of terms.

Great stress, however, is laid upon the reservation in the charter of the right to amend, alter, or repeal the act.

As a matter of fact, the reservation referred to really has no office in an act of Congress; for Congress is not subject, as the States are, to the inhibition against passing any law impairing the obligation of contracts. It has become so much the custom to insert it in all charters at the present day, that its original intent and purpose are sometimes forgotten. Since, however, it is contained in the charter of the Union Pacific Railroad Company, it is proper that its meaning and effect should be adverted to.

It seems to me that this clause has been greatly misunderstood. It is a sort of proviso peculiar to American legislation, growing out of the decision in the Dartmouth College Case. Mr. Justice Story, in his opinion in that case (4 Wheat. 675), says: 'When a private eleemosynary corporation is thus created by the charter of the crown, it is subject to no other control on the part of the crown than what is expressly or impliedly reserved by the charter itself. Unless a power be reserved for this purpose, the crown cannot in virtue of its prerogative, without the consent of the corporation, alter or amend the charter, or divest the corporation of any of its franchises.' This hint, that such a reservation would authorize an alteration or amendment to be made in a charter, has been freely availed of by legislatures and constitutional conventions in order to be freed from the constitutional restriction against impairing the validity of contracts, so far as it applied to charters of incorporation. The application of that restriction to such charters, by construing them to be contracts within the meaning of the Constitution, was a surprise to many statesmen and jurists of the country. Chief Justice Marshall, indeed, in his opinion in that case, says: 'It is more than possible that the preservation of rights of this description was not particularly in the view of the framers of the Constitution, when the clause under consideration was introduced into the instrument.' p. 644. Probably in view of this somewhat unexpected application of the clause, operating as it did to deprive the States of nearly all legislative control over corporations of their own creation, the courts have given liberal construction to the reservation of power to alter, amend, and repeal a charter; and have sustained some acts of legislation made under such a reservation which are at least questionable.

In my judgment, the reservation is to be interpreted as placing the State legislature back on the same platform of power and control over the charter containing it as it would have occupied had the constitutional restriction about contracts never existed; and I think the reservation effects nothing more. It certainly cannot be interpreted as reserving a right to violate a contract at will. No legislature ever reserved such a right in any contract. Legislatures often reserve the right to terminate a continuous contract at will; but never to violate a contract, or change its terms without the consent of the other party. The reserved power in question is simply that of legislation,-to alter, amend, or repeal a charter. This is very different from the power to violate, or to alter the terms of a contract at will. A reservation of power to violate a contract, or alter it, or impair its obligation, would be repugnant to the contract itself, and void. A proviso repugnant to the granting part of a deed, or to the enacting part of a statute, is void. Interpreted as a reservation of the right to legislate, the reserved power is sustainable on sound principles; but interpreted as the reservation of a right to violate an executed contract, it is not sustainable.

The question then comes back to the extent of the power to legislate. But that is a restricted power,-restricted by other constitutional provisions, to which reference has already been made. Certainly the legislature cannot in a charter of incorporation, or in any other law, reserve to itself any greater power of legislation then the Constitution itself concedes to it. It seems to me clear, therefore, that the power reserved cannot authorize a flat abrogation of the contract by Congress, because, as before shown, such an abrogation would be a violation of those clauses which inhibit the taking of property without process of law and without compensation.

It may be said that by reason of the reserved power to alter and repeal a charter, this court has sustained legislative acts imposing taxes from which the corporation by the charter was exempted. This is true. But the imposition of taxes is preeminently an act of legislation. Its temporary suspension, conceded in a charter, is a suspension of the legislative power pro tanto. Being such, a reservation of the right to legislate, or, which is the same thing, to alter, amend, or repeal the charter, necessarily includes the right to resume the power of taxation. The same observations apply to the regulation of fares and freights; for this is a branch of the police power, applicable to all cases which involve a common charge upon the people.

I conclude, therefore, that the power reserved to alter, amend, and repeal the charter of the Union Pacific Railroad Company is not sufficient to authorize the passage of the law in question.

I will only add, further, that the initiation of this species of legislation by Congress is well calculated to excite alarm. It has the effect of announcing to the world, and giving it to be understood, that this government does not consider itself bound by its engagements. It sets the example of repudiation of government obligations. It strikes a blow at the public credit. It asserts the principle that might makes right. It saps the foundations of public morality. Perhaps, however, these are considerations more properly to be addressed to the legislative discretion. But when forced upon the attention by what, in my judgment, is an unconstitutional exercise of legislative power, they have a more than ordinary weight and significance.