of the United States, under certain circumstances," approved May 23, 1844, and which provided that the trust under said act should be conducted under such rules and regulations as may be prescribed by the legislative authority of the State," &c., the legislature passed an act authorizing the trustee to give deeds to a person named therein, and those claiming under him; thus undertaking to dispose of the whole trust to the person thus named and his grantees, and authorizing no one else to be considered or to receive any relief. This was very plainly an attempted adjudication upon the rights of the parties concerned; it did not establish regulations for the administration of the trust, but it adjudged the trust property to certain claimants exclusively, in disregard of any rights which * might exist in others; and it was therefore declared to be [106] void. And it has also been held that, whether a corporation has been guilty of abuse of authority under its Cash, Appellant, 6 Mich. 193. The case of Powers v. Bergen, 6 N. Y. 358, is perhaps to be referred to another principle than that of encroachment upon judicial authority. That was a case where the legislature, by special act, had undertaken to authorize the sale of property, not for the purpose of satisfying liens upon it, or of meeting or in any way providing for the necessities or wants of the owners, but solely, after paying expenses, for the investment of the proceeds. It appears from that case that the executors under the will of the former owner held the lands in trust for a daughter of the testator during her natural life, with a vested remainder in fee in her two children. The special act assumed to empower them to sell and convey the complete fee, and apply the proceeds, first, to the payment of their commissions, costs, and expenses; second, to the discharge of assessments, liens, charges, and incumbrances on the land, of which, however, none were shown to exist; and, third, to invest the proceeds and pay over the income, after deducting taxes and charges, to the daughter during her life, and after her decease to convey, assign, or pay over the same to the persons who would be entitled under the will. The court regarded this as an unauthorized interference with private property upon no necessity, and altogether void, as depriving the owners of their property contrary to the "law of the land." At the same time the authority of those cases, where it has been held that the legislature, acting as the guardian and protector of those who are disabled to act for themselves by reason of infancy, lunacy, or other like cause, may constitutionally pass either general or private laws, under which an effectual disposition of their property might be made, was not questioned. The court cite, with apparent approval, the cases, among others, of Rice v. Parkman, 16 Mass. 326; Cochran v. Van Surlay, 20 Wend. 365; and Wilkinson v. Leland, 2 Pet. 657. The case of Ervine's Appeal, 16 Penn. St. 256, was similar, in the principles involved, to Powers v. Bergen, and was decided in the same way. See also Kneass's Appeal, 31 Penn. St. 87, and compare with Ker v. Kitchen, 17 Penn. St. 438; Martin's Appeal, 23 Penn. St. 437; Tharp v. Fleming, 1 Houston, 592. charter, so as justly to subject it to forfeiture, and whether a widow is entitled to dower in a specified parcel of land,2 are judicial questions which cannot be decided by the legislature. In these cases there are necessarily adverse parties; the questions that would arise are essentially judicial, and over which the courts possess jurisdiction at the common law; and it is presumable that legislative acts of this character must have been adopted carelessly, and without a due consideration of the proper boundaries which mark the separation of legislative from judicial duties.3 * We have elsewhere referred to a number of cases where [* 107] statutes have been held unobjectionable which validated legal proceedings, notwithstanding irregularities apparent in them.* These statutes may as properly be made applicable to judicial as to ministerial proceedings; and although, when they refer to such proceedings, they may at first seem like an interference with judicial authority, yet if they are only in aid of judicial proceed 'State v. Noyes, 47 Me. 189; Campbell v. Union Bank, 6 How. (Miss.) 661; Canal Co. v. Railroad Co. 4 G. & J. 122; Regents of University v. Williams, 9 G. & J. 365. In Miners Bank of Dubuque v. United States, Morris, 482, a clause in a charter authorizing the legislature to repeal it for any abuse or misuser of corporate privileges was held to refer the question of abuse to the legislative judgment. The appointment of a receiver by the legislature for an insolvent bank was sustained in Carey v. Giles, 9 Geo. 253. Edwards v. Pope, 3 Scam. 465. The injustice and dangerous character of legislation of this description are well stated by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania: "When, in the exercise of proper legislative powers, general laws are enacted which bear, or may bear, on the whole community, if they are unjust and against the spirit of the constitution, the whole community will be interested to procure their repeal by a voice potential. And that is the great security for just and fair legislation. But when individuals are selected from the mass, and laws are enacted affecting their property, without summons or notice, at the instigation of an interested party, who is to stand up for them, thus isolated from the mass, in injury and injustice, or where are they to seek relief from such acts of despotic power? They have no refuge but in the courts, the only secure place for determining conflicting rights by due course of law. But if the judiciary give way, and, in the language of the Chief Justice in Greenough v. Greenough, in 11 Penn. St. 494, 'confesses itself too weak to stand against the antagonism of the legislature and the bar,' one independent co-ordinate branch of the government will become the subservient handmaid of the other, and a quiet, insidious revolution will be effected in the administration of the government, whilst its form on paper remains the same." Ervine's Appeal, 16 Penn. St. 268. • See post, pp. 371–381. ings, and tend to their support by precluding parties from taking advantage of errors which do not affect their substantial rights, they cannot be obnoxious to the charge of usurping judicial power. The legislature does, or may, prescribe the rules under which the judicial power is exercised by the courts; and in doing so, it may dispense with any of those formalities which are not essential to the jurisdiction of the court; and whatever it may dispense with by statute anterior to the proceedings, we believe it may also dispense with by statute after the proceedings have been taken, if the court has failed to observe any of those formalities. But it would not be competent for the legislature to authorize a court to proceed and adjudicate upon the rights of parties, without giving them an opportunity to be heard before it; and, for the same reason, it would be incompetent for it, by retrospective legislation, to make valid proceedings which had been had in the courts, but which were void for want of jurisdiction over the parties. Such a legislative enactment would be doubly objectionable: first, as an exercise of judicial power, since, the proceedings in court being void, it would be the statute alone which would constitute an adjudication upon the rights of the parties; and, second, because, in all judicial proceedings, notice to parties and an opportunity to defend are essential, both of which they would be deprived of in such a case.1 And for like reasons a statute validating In McDaniel v. Correll, 19 Ill. 226, it appeared that a statute had been passed to make valid certain legal proceedings by which an alleged will was adjudged void, and which were had against non-resident defendants, over whom the courts had obtained no jurisdiction. The court say: "If it was competent for the legislature to make a void procceding valid, then it has been done in this case. Upon this question we cannot for a moment doubt or hesitate. They can no more impart a binding efficacy to a void proceeding, than they can take one man's property from him and give it to another. Indeed, to do the one is to accomplish the other. By the decree in this case the will in question was declared void, and, consequently, if effect be given to the decree, the legacies given to those absent defendants by the will are taken from them and given to others, according to our statute of descents. Until the passage of the act in question, they were not bound by the verdict of the jury in this case, and it could not form the basis of a valid decree. Had the decree been rendered before the passage of the act, it would have been as competent to make that valid as it was to validate the antecedent proceedings upon which alone the decree could rest. The want of jurisdiction over the defendants was as fatal to the one as it could be to the other. If we assume the act to be valid, then the legacies which before belonged to the legatees have now ceased to be theirs, and this result has been brought about * proceedings had before an intruder into a judicial office, [*108] before whom no one is authorized or required to appear, and who could have jurisdiction neither of the parties nor of the subject-matter, would also be void.1 by the legislative act alone. The effect of the act upon them is precisely the same as if it had declared in direct terms that the legacies bequeathed by this will to these defendants should not go to them, but should descend to the heirs-at-law of the testator, according to our law of descents. This it will not be pretended that they could do directly, and they had no more authority to do it indirectly, by making proceedings binding upon them which were void in law." In Denny v. Mattoon, 2 Allen, 361, a judge in insolvency had made certain orders in a case pending in another jurisdiction, and which the courts subsequently declared to be void. The legislature then passed an act declaring that they are hereby confirmed, and the same shall be taken and deemed good and valid in law, to all intents and purposes whatsoever." On the question of the validity of this act the court say: "The precise question is, whether it can be held to operate so as to confer a jurisdiction over parties and proceedings which it has been judicially determined does not exist, and give validity to acts and processes which have been adjudged void. The statement of this question seems to us to suggest the obvious and decisive objection to any construction of the statute which would lead to such a conclusion. It would be a direct exercise by the legislature of a power in its nature clearly judicial, from the use of which it is expressly prohibited by the thirtieth article of the Declaration of Rights. The line which marks and separates judicial from legislative duties and functions is often indistinct and uncertain, and it is sometimes difficult to decide within which of the two classes a particular subject falls. All statutes of a declaratory nature, which are designed to interpret or give a meaning to previous enactments, or to confirm the rights of parties either under their own contracts or growing out of the proceedings of courts or public bodies, which lack legal validity, involve in a certain sense the exercise of a judicial power. They operate upon subjects which might properly come within the cognizance of the courts and form the basis of judicial consideration and judgment. But they may, nevertheless, be supported as being within the legitimate sphere of legislative action, on the ground that they do not declare or determine, but only confirm rights; that they give effect to the acts of parties according to their intent; that they furnish new and more efficacious remedies, or create a more beneficial interest or tenure, or, by supplying defects and curing informalities in the proceedings of courts, or of public officers acting within the scope of their authority, they give effect to acts to which there was the express or implied assent of the parties interested. Statutes which are intended to accomplish such purposes do not necessarily invade the province, or directly interfere with the action of judicial tribunals. But if we adopt the broadest and most comprehensive view of the power of the legislature, we must place some limit beyond which the authority of the legislature cannot go without trenching on the clear and well-defined boundaries of judicial power." “Although it may be difficult, if not impossible, to lay down any general rule which may serve to determine, in all cases, whether the limits of constitutional [* 109] * Legislative Divorces. There is another class of cases in which it would seem that action ought to be referred exclusively to the judicial tribunals, but in respect to which the prevailing doctrine seems to be, [*110] that the legislature * has complete control unless specially restrained by the State constitution. The granting of divorces from the bonds of matrimony was not confided to the courts in England, and from the earliest days the Colonial and State legislatures in this country have assumed to possess the same power over the subject which was possessed by the Parliament, and from time to time they have passed special laws declaring a dissolution of the bonds of matrimony in special cases. Now it is clear that "the question of divorce involves investigations which are properly of a judicial nature, and the jurisdiction over divorces ought to be restraint are overstepped by the exercise by one branch of the government of powers exclusively delegated to another, it certainly is practicable to apply to each case as it arises some test by which to ascertain whether this fundamental principle is violated. If, for example, the practical operation of a statute is to determine adversary suits pending between party and party, by substituting in place of the well-settled rules of law the arbitrary will of the legislature, and thereby controlling the action of the tribunal before which the suits are pending, no one can doubt that it would be an unauthorized act of legislation, because it directly infringes on the peculiar and appropriate functions of the judiciary. It is the exclusive province of the courts of justice to apply established principles to cases within their jurisdiction, and to enforce their jurisdiction by rendering judgments and executing them by suitable process. The legislature have no power to interfere with this jurisdiction in such manner as to change the decision of cases pending before courts, or to impair or set aside their judgments, or to take cases out of the settled course of judicial proceeding. It is on this principle that it has been held, that the legislature have no power to grant a new trial or direct a rehearing of a cause which has been once judicially settled. The right to a review, or to try anew facts which have been determined by a verdict or decree, depends on fixed and well-settled principles, which it is the duty of the court to apply in the exercise of a sound judgment and discretion. These cannot be regulated or governed by legislative action. Taylor v. Place, 4 R. I. 324, 337; Lewis v. Webb, 3 Me. 326; Dechastellux v. Fairchild, 15 Penn. St. 18. A fortiori, an act of the legislature cannot set aside or amend final judgments or decrees." The court further consider the general subject at length, and adjudge the particular enactment under consideration void, both as an exercise of judicial authority, and also because, in declaring valid the void proceedings in insolvency against the debtor, under which assignees had been appointed, it took away from the debtor his property, not by due process of law or the law of the land, but by an arbitrary exercise of legislative will." 66 |