CONSTITUTIONAL LAW.

A. OF THE UNITED STATES.

1. There must be a direct statute of the United States in order to bring
within the scope of its laws obstructions and nuisances in navigable
streams within a State; such obstructions and nuisances being offences
against the laws of the States within which the navigable waters lie,
but no offence against the United States in the absence of a statute.
Willamette Iron Bridge Co. v. Hatch, 1.

2. The provision in the "act for the admission of Oregon into the Union,"
11 Stat. 383, c. 33, § 2, that "all the navigable waters of said State
shall be common highways and forever free, as well to the inhabitants
of said State as to all other citizens of the United States, without any
tax, duty, impost, or toll therefor," does not refer to physical obstruc-
tions of those waters, but to political regulations which would hamper
the freedom of commerce. lb.

3. Until Congress acts respecting navigable streams entirely within a State,
the State has plenary power; but Congress is not concluded by any-
thing that the State or individuals by its authority or acquiescence
may have done, from assuming entire control, and abating any erec-
tions that may have been made, and preventing any other from
being made except in conformity with such regulations as it may
impose. Ib.

4. The appropriation by Congress of money to be expended in improv-
ing the navigation of the Willamette River was no assumption of
police power over it. Ib.

5. Congress by conferring the privilege of a port of entry upon a munici
pality, does not come in conflict with the police power of a State exer-
cised in bridging its own navigable rivers below such port. Ib.

6. The provision of the Constitution of the United States, which declares
that no State shall pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts,
is aimed at the legislative power of the State, and not at decisions of
its courts, or acts of executive or administrative boards or officers, or
doings of corporations or individuals. New Orleans Water Works v.
Louisiana Sugar Refining Co., 18.

7. This court has no jurisdiction of a writ of error to the highest court of
a State, on the ground that the obligation of a contract has been im-
paired, unless some legislative act of the State is upheld by the judg-
ment sought to be reviewed; and when the state court gives no effect
to a law of the State subsequent to the contract, but holds, upon
grounds independent of that law, that the right claimed was not con-
ferred by the contract, the writ of error must be dismissed for want of
jurisdiction. Ib.

8. The exaction of a license fee by a State to enable a corporation organ-
ized under the laws of another State to have an office within its limits
for the use of the officers, stockholders, agents, or employés of the
corporation, does not impinge upon the commercial clause of the

Federal Constitution (Article I, section VIII, clause 3), provided the
corporation is neither engaged in carrying on foreign or interstate
commerce, nor employed by the government of the United States.
Pembina Mining Co. v. Pennsylvania, 181.

9. Corporations are not citizens within the meaning of the clause of the
Constitution declaring that the citizens of each State shall be entitled
to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States, Arti-
cle IV, section II, clause 1. Ib.

10. A private corporation is included under the designation of " 'person
in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, section I. Ib.
11. The provisions in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, sec-
tion 1, that "no State shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction
the equal protection of the laws," do not prohibit a State from requir-
ing for the admission within its limits of a corporation of another
State such conditions as it chooses. Ib.

12. The only limitation upon the power of a State to exclude a foreign
corporation from doing business within its limits, or hiring offices for
that purpose, or to exact conditions for allowing the corporations to do
business or hire offices there, arises where the corporation is in the
employ of the federal government, or where its business is strictly
commerce, interstate or foreign. Ib.

13. A judgment of the highest court of a State, sustaining the validity of
an assessment upon lands under a statute of the State, which was
alleged to be unconstitutional and void because it afforded to the
owners no opportunity to be heard upon the whole amount of the as-
sessment, involves a decision against a right claimed under the pro-
vision of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the
United States prohibiting the taking of property without due process
of law, and may be reviewed by this court on writ of error, although
the Constitution of the State contains a similar provision, and no con-
stitutional provision is specifically mentioned in the record of the state
court. Spencer v. Merchant, 345.

14. If the legislature of a State, in the exercise of its power of taxation,
directs the expense of laying out, grading or repairing a street to be
assessed upon the owners of lands benefited thereby; and determines
the whole amount of the tax, and what lands, which might be so ben-
efited, are in fact benefited; and provides for notice to and hearing of
each owner, at some stage of the proceedings, upon the question what
proportion of the tax shall be assessed upon his land; there is no
taking of his property without due process of law, in violation of the
Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Ib.
15. Pursuant to an act of the legislature of New York, the expense of

grading a street was assessed by commissioners upon the lands lying
within three hundred feet on either side of the street, and which
would, in the judgment of commissioners, be benefited. After the
sums so assessed upon some lots had been paid, the Court of Appeals

of the State adjudged the assessment to be void, because the act made
no provision for notice to or hearing of the land-owners. The legisla
ture then passed another act, directing a sum equal to so much of the
first assessment as had not been paid, adding a proportional part of
the expenses of making that assessment, and interest since, to be
assessed upon and equitably apportioned among the lots, the former
assessment on which had not been paid, first giving notice to all par-
ties interested to appear and be heard upon the question of the appor-
tionment of this sum among these lots, but not as to any apportion-
ment between them and those lots, the former assessments upon which
had been paid. Held, that an assessment laid under the latter statute
was not a taking of property without due process of law, in violation
of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United
States.

Ib.

16. The question whether, when Congress fails to provide a regulation by
law as to any particular subject of commerce among the States is con-
clusive of its intention that that subject shall be free from positive
regulation, or that, until Congress intervenes, it shall be left to be
dealt with by the States, is one to be determined from the circum-
stances of each case as it arises. Bowman v. Chicago & Northwestern
Railway Co., 465.

17. So far as the will of Congress respecting commerce among the States
by means of railroads can be determined from its enactment of the
provisions of law found in Rev. Stat. § 5258, and Rev. Stat. c. 6,
Title 48, §§ 4252-4289, they are indications of an intention that such
transportation of commodities between the States shall be free except
when restricted by Congress, or by a State with the express permission
of Congress. Ib.

18. A State cannot, for the purpose of protecting its people against the

evils of intemperance, enact laws which regulate commerce between
its people and those of other States of the Union, unless the consent
of Congress, express or implied, is first obtained. Ib.

19. Section 1553 of the Code of the State of Iowa, as amended by c. 143
of the acts of the 20th General Assembly in 1886, (forbidding common
carriers to bring intoxicating liquors into the State from any other
State or Territory, without being first furnished with a certificate,
under the seal of the auditor of the county to which it is to be trans-
ported or consigned, certifying that the consignee or person to whom
it is to be transported or delivered is authorized to sell intoxicating
liquors in the county,) although adopted without a purpose of affect-
ing interstate commerce, but as a part of the general system designed
to protect the health and morals of the people against the evils result-
ing from the unrestricted manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors
within the State, is neither an inspection law, nor a quarantine law, but
is essentially a regulation of commerce among the States, affecting
interstate commerce in an essential and vital part; and, not being

sanctioned by the authority, express or implied, of Congress, is repug-
nant to the Constitution of the United States. 1b.

20. Whether the right of transportation of an article of commerce from one
State to another includes by necessary implication the right of the con-
signee to sell it in unbroken packages at the place where the transpor-
tation terminates, quære. Ib.

21. A state statute which authorizes an injunction to be issued to restrain
a corporation organized under the laws of another State, whose taxes
are in arrear, from prosecuting its business within the State until the
taxes are paid, is void so far as it assumes to confer power upon a
court to so restrain a telegraph company which has accepted the pro-
visions of Rev. Stat. § 5263 from operating its lines over military and
post roads of the United States. Western Union Telegraph Co. v.
Massachusetts, 530.

22. A statute of a State fixing at three cents a mile the maximum price
that any railroad corporation may take for carrying a passenger
within the State, is not, as applied to a corporation reorganized by the
purchasers at the sale of a railroad under a decree of foreclosure,
shown to be a taking of property without due process of law, in con-
travention of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the
United States, by evidence that under that restriction, and with its
existing traffic, its net yearly income will pay less than one and a half
per cent on the original cost of the road, and only a little more than
two per cent on the amount of the bonded debt, without any proof
of the cost of its bonded debt, or the amount of the capital stock of
the reorganized corporation, or the price paid by this corporation for
the road. Dow v. Beidelman, 680.

23. A statute of a State classifying its railroad corporations by the length
of their lines, and fixing a different limit of the rate of passenger
fares in each class, does not deny to any corporation the equal protec-
tion of the laws, within the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitu-
tion of the United States.

Ib.

See HUSBAND AND WIFE, 4;

JURISDICTION, A, 1;
NATIONAL BANK, 2.

B. OF A STATE.

Under the provision in the constitution of the State of Illinois adopted in
1870 that "private property shall not be taken or damaged for public
use without just compensation," a recovery may be had in all cases
where private property has sustained a substantial injury from the
making and use of an improvement that is public in its character;
whether the damage be direct, as when caused by trespass or physical
invasion of the property, or consequential as in a diminution of its
market value. Chicago v. Taylor, 161.

CONTRACT.

The court holds as the result of the transactions between the parties which
are recited in its opinion, that, each being a holder of shares in a rail-
road company, they agreed that their respective interests should be
joint and equal, and that the appellant should pay to the appellee the
sum necessary to equalize the difference in cost between them; and
that, this agreement not being carried out by the appellant, the parties
substituted a new agreement, based upon the principal feature of the
old one (that the appellee should sell to the appellant enough of his
stock to make the holdings equal), but that each holding under the
new agreement was to be in severalty and free from conditions. Davi-
son v. Davis, 90.

See EQUITY, 3;

FRAUDULENT REPRESENTATIONS;
POWERS;

SALE.

CORPORATION.

See CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, A, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

COUNTER CLAIM.

In an action in the Court of Claims by an officer to recover a balance
claimed to be due him on pay account, the United States can set up
as a counter-claim an alleged overpayment to him on that account,
and can have judgment for it if established. United States v. Bur-
chard, 176.

COURT AND JURY.

1. A charge in an action to try title to real estate which instructed the jury
that if they believe that a paper offered in evidence containing a sig-
nature of a party under whom both parties' claim was as old as its
date imported, and that it had been preserved in the public archives
as the initial paper in the grant, they might give to these circum-
stances the weight of direct testimony to the genuineness of the sig-
nature, and if the other proof did not in their judgment overbear its
weight, might find the signature to be proved, neither takes from the
jury the determination of the weight of evidence, nor submits to it a
question that should be decided by the court. Williams v. Conger, 397.
2. In the courts of the United States it is competent for the court to give
to the jury its opinion upon the weight of evidence, leaving the jury
to determine upon the testimony. Ib.

COURT OF CLAIMS.

See APPEAL;

COUNTER-CLAIM.