Union Mutual Insurance Co. v. Commercial Mutual Marine Insurance Co.........318 United States v. Brig Neurea....... 73 92 ...343 363 United States v. Sutherland et al.......... Vance et al. v. Dupont de Nemours & Co............ 56 ............162 ............... 82 THE DECISIONS OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, AT DECEMBER TERM, 1856. 1 JEAN LOUIS PREVOST, PLAINTIFF IN ERROR, v. CHARLES E. GRENEAUX, TREASURER OF THE STATE OF LOUISIANA: The laws of Louisiana impose a tax of ten per cent. on the value of all property inherited in that State by any person not domiciliated there, and not being a citizen of any State or Territory of the United States. In 1853, a treaty was made between the United States and France, by which THIS case was brought up from the Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana by a writ of error issued under the 25th section of the judiciary act. The facts in the case were very few, and are stated in the opinion of the court. See also 8 Howard, 490, and 18 Howard, 182. It was argued by Mr. Janin for the plaintiff in error, and by Mr. Benjamin for the defendant. Mr. Janin made the following point: The plaintiff in error submits and that is the only point in the case that his heirship was only recognised in 1854; and that when the law imposing a tax or penalty is repealed before that tax is collected, the right to recover it is lost. This principle was recognised by the former Supreme Court of Louisiana. In the case of the city of New Orleans v. Mrs. Grailhe, decided December 4, 1854, it was contended that the right to Prevost v. Greneaux. collect the tax levied by the ordinance of 1852 was lost by the repeal of that ordinance under the 5th condition of the 2d section of the acts of the Legislature of March 15, 1854, page 73, authorizing the city of New Orleans to subscribe to the Opelousas and Jackson railroads. This position was taken under the authority of the principles recognised in three decisions: one in the case of Cooper v. Hodge, 17 L., 476, and two others referred to in that decision. Judge Martin was the organ of the court in these three cases. In that of Cooper v. Hodge, the principle is expressed in this form: "We have held, that if a judgment be correctly given under a law which is repealed pending the appeal, this court is bound to reverse it." The Supreme Court of the United States have acted on this principle in cases of much more difficulty than that now before the court. The Legislature of Virginia, by an act passed in 1779, during the war, had authorized Virginia debtors of British subjects to discharge the debt by payment into an office existing under the State Government. The defendants in, error, under this act, had paid into this office a portion of their indebtedness to the plaintiffs, and pleaded their discharge pro tanto under the act. The plaintiffs replied the 4th article of the definitive treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States, of September 3, 1783, in which it was stipulated that creditors on either side should meet with no lawful impediment to the recovery of the full value in sterling money of all bona fide debts heretofore contracted. The State was held to have had full power to make the law, but it had been annulled by the treaty, and the defendants in error were liable to the full amount, notwithstanding partial payment to the State. 1 Cranch, 103. The United States v. The Schooner Peggy. The schooner Peggy was captured by a United States armed vessel, and libelled as prize, ordered to be restored by the District Court, condemned by the Circuit Court on appeal as lawful prize, when the owners of the Peggy prosecuted a writ of error to the Supreme Court. She had been captured as sailing under the authority of the French Republic. On the 30th of September, 1801, pending the writ of error, a convention was signed between the United States and the French Republic,. and was ratified on the 21st of December, 1801, which provided for the restoration of property captured, but not yet definitively condemned. It was urged that the court could take no notice of the stipulation for the restoration of property not yet definitively Prevost v. Greneaux. condemned; that the judge could only inquire if the sentence was correct or erroneous when delivered; and that if it was then correct, it could not be rendered otherwise by anything subsequent to its rendition. It was held by the court, in the opinion delivered by Chief Justice Marshall, that if, subsequent to the judgment and before the decision of the appellate court, a law intervenes and positively changes the rule which governs, the law must be obeyed, or its obligation denied; that, where a treaty is the law of the land, and, as such, binds the rights of parties litigating in court, to condemn a vessel, the restoration of which was directed by it, would be a direct infraction of that law, and of consequence improper; that if the law was constitutional, and no doubt of it had been expressed in this case, no court could contest its obligation. The effect upon civil rights acquired under a statute, of the repeal of the statute, was most fully considered in the case of Butler v. Palmer, (1 Hill's Rep., 324,) in an elaborate opinion of Judge Cowen. In speaking of the effect of a repeal upon inchoate rights, he says: "I understand the rule of the writers on the civil law perfectly to agree with that acted on by our courts in all their decisions, anciert and modern. Those writers speak of rights which have arisen under the statute not being affected by the repeal, but the context shows at once what kind of rights they mean. The amount of the whole comes to this: that a repealing clause is such an express enactment as necessarily divests all inchoate rights which had arisen under the statute it destroys. These rights are but incidents to the statute, and fall with it unless saved by the express words of the repealing clause." He reviews the case of Miller, (1 W. Blackstone's Rep., 451,) and gives a much fuller statement of it from some other reporter. See, also, Smith's Commentaries on Statutory Construction, pp. 888, 889, for the same case, and the English decisions in affirmance of it. The result of these decisions is, that not only in penal and jurisdictional matters, but in civil matters, where rights that are inchoate and set up under a repealed statute, they are divested as fully as if the statute had never existed. But can it with any propriety be said in any case that the State acquires a vested civil right to a tax? To impose, levy, and collect a tax is an exercise of the sovereign power, as much as the levying and collecting a fine for a misdemeanor. The repeal of the statute imposing one or the other at once stops all action under it. A sovereign never pleads a vested civil right to a tax; he simply takes it by virtue of his inherent power. A statute is simply an exertion of that power; its repeal, the withdrawal of the application of the power. The |