SECTION II.

"1. The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.

"2. A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another State, shall, on demand of the executive authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the crime.

"3. No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

§ 601. In these provisions rights and obligations are expressly or impliedly spoken of as having legal recognition in, or as attaching to private persons under State jurisdictions other than that in which the relations which those rights and obligations constitute were first created; and persons are considered as appearing in some one of the States in the character of aliens to the local law of that State, and as having rights or sustaining obligations under the law of their previous domicil, or that of some one State jurisdiction to which they have been previously subject. They regulate, in some degree, the application of State laws to persons coming from other States, and maintain, in otherwise independent jurisdictions, relations which exist under the dominion of another State. They are therefore international in their effect.

But though these provisions are taken to rest for their authority upon the same political power as do other provisions of the Constitution, there may be still some doubt as to the persons who are the immediate subjects of the law which they contain. That is, a question may be raised whether the States, in their political personality, are subjects of the relation created by them, or whether, like other provisions of the Constitution, they operate on natural persons within the limits of the United States independently of the powers vested in the States severally and are law within each State by resting on the national authority of the United States, irrespectively of

the juridical action of the States as separate polities. In the latter alternative they evidently have a more positive and obligatory character, as law, in reference to the State jurisdictions, than those ordinary rules of international intercourse which are law within any national jurisdiction in an imperfect sense only, or are not law except as identified with the municipal law thereof, whether they be derived from the law of natural reason as judicially interpreted (common law, including the historical law of nations), or from positive legislation, including the mutual agreements of independent states. But, if the first alternative is to be adopted, it will depend upon the means contemplated in the Constitution for making them effective, whether they are equivalent merely to ordinary international agreements, or may operate on private persons with the force of the national municipal law.'

In reference therefore to that relation of superior and inferior which is implied in them and their character as public law-i. e., law determining the possession and extent of juridical power and the rights and duties of public persons—there are four different views which may be taken of these provisions, involving different conceptions of their practical operation on the relations of private persons; and though all these views or constructions may not have actually been advanced, in judicial investigations, as to more than one of these provisions, they will be here stated before attempting any original investigation. of any part of this Article.

§ 602. 1. According to the first of these constructions, these provisions have only the force of a compact between the States, as distinct political personalities, each sovereign within its own jurisdiction; and, regarded as an international rule of action for the States, they are law in an imperfect sense only, affecting private persons within the limits of the several States only by the will and consent of the local and several sovereignty and by becoming identified with the local law-the juridical will of that sovereignty; the States being the parties bound by 1 Ante, § 593.

These views will hereinafter be called constructions, because it is supposed that their correctness is to be determined by construction, as distinguished from interpretation. See ante, I. p. 434, n. 1.

or subject to them, and at the same time the several sources from which they are to derive their coercive effect upon private persons within the limits of each State.

The three other constructions alluded to agree in attributing to these clauses the force of law in the strict and proper sense, according to that estimate of the nature of the Constitution which is founded on the fact that it is announced as the will of an integral possessor of sovereign power.' But they differ in respect to the persons who are taken to be bound by the provisions as they stand in the Constitution.

2. According to the second construction, the States are still regarded as the immediate subjects of the rule of action contained in this Article; the duties which it creates being still taken, as under the first view, to be international on the part of the States, as political persons, towards the other States, or towards persons claiming rights as the inhabitants of other States. It will be perceived that the duties which, according to this theory, are created by these provisions, differ in no respect from those arising under the first construction; and the difference, in respect to effect upon private persons, arises from an inference drawn from the coercive character attributed to this part of the Constitution, which is,-that, because intended to be obligatory, there must be some person, representing the authors of the law, who may carry it into effect independently of any autonomic action of the States who are its subjects.

3. According to the third construction, while these clauses act on private and public persons specifically indicated, to the extent of giving to them a subsisting legal right, they simultaneously act upon the national government, to the extent of attributing to it a duty correlative to the right given to those persons; thus creating a legal relation between those persons and the national government under a law which, as private law and law in the strict sense, may be applied by judicial and ministerial officers, or, as public law, may authorize the government to act by way of fulfilling the duty imposed upon it.

4. According to the fourth construction, while these clauses are taken to be, as under the preceding view, a law in the See ante, Vol. I. § 359, second head.

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strict and proper sense, private persons, only, are its immediate subjects and the rights and duties created by it are the constituent parts of a relation between private persons. According to this view these clauses have the effect of private international law, in applying to persons distinguished by their domicil, but are binding on all persons within the United States as a national municipal (internal) law, without regard to the limits of the State jurisdictions and their political existence, except as they are the jurisdictions by the existence of which private persons are distinguished as either domiciled or alien; and, having this character, they are applicable by judicial and ministerial officers of the national and State governments, as are other portions of the national private law.

603. Although these provisions are in juxtaposition in the Constitution, and are alike in having an international effect, there is apparently no necessity for supposing that a similar construction in this respect must be given to each one of these distinct clauses of the first and second section of the Fourth Article. They therefore require to be severally considered, in reference to the foregoing remarks, although they are assumed to have a like international purpose.

It will also be noticed, in reference to these clauses, that their character as public law, or connection with the possessors of sovereign power in the United States, may be distinguished from their purpose and object as private law,—their effect upon private persons,-which is to be separately ascertained; and that any one clause may receive the same interpretation. and construction, in reference to such effect upon private persons, under either of the views above stated. In other words, while the ultimate consequence, as to private persons, from any one of these clauses, may be different, according to the construction which may be adopted for it as public law, yet, under either, the intended effect upon the legal condition of private persons must be supposed to be the same.

Therefore, although it may be more in accordance with the method of analysis which has been herein pursued, in examining each several provision, to determine first its proper construction as public law and whether the States or private

persons are the subjects of the rights and duties it creates, that question may in each case be postponed to that of the application of such provision as private law and to the determination of the rights and obligations of private persons under it, so far as they may be connected with the contrasted conditions of freedom and of bondage.

Indeed, although some one of the above-enumerated views or constructions must always be assumed before any one provision could practically affect private persons, yet, in point of fact, the question of the proper construction of these provisions, in reference to the actual distribution of sovereign power between the several States and the national government, has not been hitherto judicially noticed, except after legislative action in reference to them on the part either of the States or of the Congress of the United States. It will be in accordance with the historical method of exposition to notice the proper construction of these provisions, as public law, only in connection with such legislative action.

§ 604. The terms employed in the promulgation of law are to be interpreted according to their anterior juridical use by the same possessors of sovereign power, or those to whose place and dominion they may have succeeded, the identity, in their successive juridical action, of different political persons, founded upon the historical fact of occupying the same territorial jurisdiction or domain, being a necessary or natural principle of jurisprudence. In considering those clauses of the Constitution which have the force of a national municipal (internal) law in respect to relations incident to personal condition or status, it was held,' that the meaning or effect of the terms in which they are expressed is to be determined by their former use in juridical acts deriving their authority from the same source of power and operating with the like extent, as a municipal (internal) law, within the same jurisdiction. These provisions of the Fourth Article are derived from the same political authority and are equally the public and private municipal law, i. e., internal, law of one country. They therefore must be interpreted and construed by principles ap