Opinion of the Court. to the proceedings of the legislature, and a correspondent responsibility of the members to their respective constituents. And it is founded in sound policy and deep political foresight. Intrigue and cabal are thus deprived of some of their main resources, by plotting and devising measures in secrecy. The public mind is enlightened by an attentive examination of the public measures; patriotism, and integrity, and wisdom obtain their due reward; and votes are ascertained, not by vague conjecture, but by positive facts. . So long as known and open responsibility is valuable as a check or an incentive among the representatives of a free people, so long a journal of their proceedings and their votes, published in the face of the world, will continue to enjoy public favor and be demanded by public opinion." 1 Story, Constitution, §§ 840, 841. In regard to certain matters, the Constitution expressly requires that they shall be entered on the journal. To what extent the validity of legislative action may be affected by the failure to have those matters entered on the journal, we need not inquire. No such question is presented for determination. But it is clear that, in respect to the particular mode in which, or with what fulness, shall be kept the proceedings of either house relating to matters not expressly required to be entered on the journals; whether bills, orders, resolutions, reports and amendments shall be entered at large on the journal, or only referred to and designated by their titles or by numbers; these and like matters were left to the discretion of the respective houses of Congress. Nor does any clause of that instrument, either expressly or by necessary implication, prescribe the mode in which the fact of the original passage of a bill by the House of Representatives and the Senate shall be authenticated, or preclude Congress from adopting any mode to that end which its wisdom suggests. Although the Constitution does not expressly require bills that have passed Congress to be attested by the signatures of the presiding officers of the two houses, usage, the orderly conduct of legislative proceedings and the rules under which the two bodies. have acted since the organization of the government, require that mode of authentication. Opinion of the Court. The signing by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and by the President of the Senate, in open session, of an enrolled bill, is an official attestation by the two houses of such bill as one that has passed Congress. It is a declaration. by the two houses, through their presiding officers, to the President, that a bill, thus attested, has received, in due form, the sanction of the legislative branch of the government, and that it is delivered to him in obedience to the constitutional requirement that all bills which pass Congress shall be presented to him. And when a bill, thus attested, receives his approval, and is deposited in the public archives, its authentication as a bill that has passed Congress should be deemed complete and unimpeachable. As the President has no authority to approve a bill not passed by Congress, an enrolled act in the custody of the Secretary of State, and having the official attestations of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, of the President of the Senate, and of the President of the United States, carries, on its face, a solemn assurance by the legislative and executive departments of the government, charged, respectively, with the duty of enacting and executing the laws, that it was passed by Congress. The respect due to coequal and independent departments requires the judicial department to act upon that assurance, and to accept, as having passed Congress, all bills authenticated in the manner stated: leaving the courts to determine, when the question properly arises, whether the act, so authenticated, is in conformity with the Constitution. It is admitted that an enrolled act, thus authenticated, is sufficient evidence of itself-nothing to the contrary appearing upon its face that it passed Congress. But the contention is, that it cannot be regarded as a law of the United States if the journal of either house fails to show that it passed in the precise form in which it was signed by the presiding officers of the two houses, and approved by the President. It is said that, under any other view, it becomes possible for the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President of the Senate to impose upon the people as a law a bill that was never passed by Congress. But this possibility is too remote Opinion of the Court. to be seriously considered in the present inquiry. It suggests a deliberate conspiracy to which the presiding officers, the I committees on enrolled bills and the clerks of the two houses must necessarily be parties, all acting with a common purpose to defeat an expression of the popular will in the mode prescribed by the Constitution. Judicial action based upon such a suggestion is forbidden by the respect due to a coördinate branch of the government. The evils that may result from the recognition of the principle that an enrolled act, in the custody of the Secretary of State, attested by the signatures of the presiding officers of the two houses of Congress, and the approval of the President, is conclusive evidence that it was passed by Congress, according to the forms of the Constitution, would be far less than those that would certainly result from a rule making the validity of Congressional enactments depend upon the manner in which the journals of the respective houses are kept by the subordinate officers charged with the duty of keeping them. The views we have expressed are supported by numerous adjudications in this country, to some of which it is well to refer. In Pangborn v. Young, 32 N. J. Law (3 Vroom) 29, 37, the question arose as to the relative value, as evidence of the passage of a bill, of the journals of the respective houses of the legislature and the enrolled act authenticated by the signatures of the speakers of the two houses and by the approval of the governor. The bill there in question, it was alleged, originated in the house and was amended in the Senate, but, as presented to and approved by the governor, did not contain all the amendments made in the Senate. Referring to the provision in the constitution of New Jersey, requiring each house of the legislature to keep a journal of its proceedings which provision is in almost the same words as the above clause quoted from the Federal Constitution · - the court, speaking by Chief Justice Beasley, said that it was impossible for the mind not to incline to the opinion that the framers of the Constitution, in exacting the keeping of the journals, did not design to create records that were to be the ultimate and conclusive evidence of the conformity of VOL. CXLIII-43 Opinion of the Court. legislative action to the constitutional provisions relating to the enactment of laws. In the nature of things, it was observed, these journals must have been constructed out of loose and hasty memoranda made in the pressure of business and amid the distractions of a numerous assembly. The Chief Justice said: "Can any one deny that, if the laws of the State are to be tested by a comparison with these journals, so imperfect, so unauthenticated, that the stability of all written law will be shaken to its very foundation? Certainly no person can venture to say that many of our statutes, perhaps some of the oldest and most important, those which affect large classes of persons or on which great interests depend, will not be found defective, even in constitutional particulars, if judged by this criterion. . . In addition to these considerations, in judg ing of consequences, we are to remember the danger under the prevalence of such a doctrine to be apprehended from the intentional corruption of evidences of this character. It is scarcely too much to say that the legal existence of almost every legislative act would be at the mercy of all persons having access to these journals; for it is obvious that any law can be invalidated by the interpolation of a few lines or the obliteration of one name and the substitution of another in its stead. I cannot consent to expose the state legislation to the hazards of such probable error or facile fraud. The doctrine contended for on the part of the evidence has no foundation, in my estimation, on any considerations of public policy." The conclusion was, that upon grounds of public policy, as well as upon the ancient and well settled rules of law, a copy of a bill bearing the signatures of the presiding officers of the two houses of the legislature and the approval of the governor, and found in the custody of the Secretary of State, was conclusive proof of the enactment and contents of a statute, and could not be contradicted by the legislative journals or in any other mode. These principles were affirmed by the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals in Freeholders of Passaic v. Stevenson, 46 N. J. Law (17 Vroom) 173, 184, and in Standard Underground Co. v. Attorney General, 46 N. J. Eq. (1 Dickinson) 270, 276. Opinion of the Court. In Sherman v. Story, 30 California, 253, 275, the whole subject was carefully considered. The court, speaking through Mr. Justice Sawyer, said: "Better, far better, that a provision should occasionally find its way into the statute through mistake, or even fraud, than that every act, state and national, should at any and all times be liable to be put in issue and impeached by the journals, loose papers of the legislature and parol evidence. Such a state of uncertainty in the statute laws of the land would lead to mischiefs absolutely intolerable. The result of the authorities in England and in the other States clearly is, that, at common law, whenever a general statute is misrecited, or its existence denied, the question is to be tried and determined by the court as a question of law that is to say, the court is bound to take notice of it, and inform itself the best way it can; that there is no plea by which its existence can be put in issue and tried as a question of fact; that if the enrollment of the statute is in existence, the enrollment itself is the record, which is conclu sive as to what the statute is, and cannot be impeached, de stroyed or weakened by the journals of Parliament or any other less authentic or less satisfactory memorials; and that there has been no departure from the principles of the common law in this respect in the United States, except in instances where a departure has been grounded on, or taken in pursuance of, some express constitutional or statutory provision requiring some relaxation of the rule, in order that full effect might be given to such provisions; and in such instances the rule has been relaxed by judges with great caution and hesitation, and the departure has never been extended beyond an inspection of the journals of both branches of the legislature." The provisions of the California constitution, in force when the above case was decided, relating to the journals of legislative proceedings, were substantially like the clause upon that subject in the Constitution of the United States. The doctrines of the above case were reaffirmed in People v. Burt, 43 California, 560. But it should be observed that at a subsequent date a new constitution was adopted in California, under which the journals have been examined to impeach an |