Territorial Limitation to State Legislative Authority. The legislative authority of every State must spend its [128] force within the territorial limits of the State. The legislature of one State cannot make laws by which people outside the State must govern their actions, except as they may have occasion to resort to the remedies which the State provides, or to deal with property situated within the State. It can have no authority upon the high seas beyond State lines, because there is the point of contact with other nations, and all international questions belong to the national government. It cannot provide for the punishment as crimes of acts committed beyond the State boundary, because such acts, if offences at all, must be offences against the sovereignty within whose limits they have been done.2 But if the consequences of an unlawful act committed outside the State have reached their ultimate and injurious result within it, it seems that the perpetrator may be punished as an offender against such State.3 barrass its discharge of legislative duties. And see post, p. 206. In Coats v. Mayor, &c., of New York, 7 Cow. 585, it was decided that though a municipal corporation grant lands for cemetery purposes, and covenant for their quiet enjoyment, it will not thereby be estopped afterwards to forbid the use of the land, by by-law, for that purpose, when such use becomes or is likely to become a nuisance. See also, on the same subject, Morgan v. Smith, 4 Minn. 104; Kincaid's Appeal, 66 Penn. St. 411; s. c. 5 Am. Rep. 377; Hamrick v. Rouse, 17 Geo. 56, where it was held that the legislature could not bind its successors not to remove a county seat; Bass v. Fontleroy, 11 Texas, 698; Shaw v. Macon, 21 Geo. 280; Regents of University v. Williams, 9 G. & J. 390; Mott v. Pennsylvania Railroad Co., 30 Penn. St. 9. In Bank of Republic v. Hamilton, 21 Ill. 53, it was held that, in construing a statute, it will not be intended that the legislature designed to abandon its right as to taxation. This subject is considered further, post, pp. 280–284. 11 Bish. Cr. Law, § 120. 2 State v. Knight, 2 Hayw. 109; People v. Merrill, 2 Park. Cr. R. 590; Adams v. People, 1 N. Y. 173; Tyler v. People, 8 Mich. 320; Morrissey v. People, 11 Mich. 327; Bromley v. People, 7 Mich. 472; State v. Main, 16 Wis. 398. 3 In Tyler v. People, 8 Mich. 320, it was held constitutional to punish in Michigan a homicide committed by a mortal blow in Canadian waters, from which death resulted in the State. In Morrissey v. People, 11 Mich. 327, the court was divided on the question whether the State could lawfully provide for the punishment of persons who, having committed larceny abroad, brought the stolen Other Limitations of Legislative Authority. Besides the limitations of legislative authority to which we have referred, others exist which do not seem to call for special remark. Some of these are prescribed by constitutions,1 but *others spring from the very nature of free government. [* 129] The latter must depend for their enforcement upon legislative wisdom, discretion, and conscience. The legislature is to make laws for the public good, and not for the benefit of individuals. It has control of the public moneys, and should provide for property within the State. The power was sustained in People v. Williams, 24 Mich. 156, where the larceny was in another State. And see State v. Main, 16 Wis. 398. 1 The restrictions upon State legislative authority are much more extensive in some constitutions than in others. The Constitution of Missouri has the following provision: "The General Assembly shall not pass special laws divorcing any named parties, or declaring any named person of age, or authorizing any named minor to sell, lease, or encumber his or her property, or providing for the sale of the real estate of any named minor or other person laboring under legal disability, by any executor, administrator, guardian, trustee, or other person, or establishing, locating, altering the course, or effecting the construction of roads, or the building or repairing of bridges, or establishing, altering, or vacating any street, avenue, or alley in any city or town, or extending the time for the assessment or collection of taxes, or otherwise relieving any assessor or collector of taxes from the due performance of his official duties, or giving effect to informal or invalid wills or deeds, or legalizing, except as against the State, the unauthorized or invalid acts of any officer, or granting to any individual or company the right to lay down railroad tracks in the streets of any city or town, or exempting any property of any named person or corporation from taxation. The General Assembly shall pass no special law for any case for which provision can be made by a general law, but shall pass general laws providing, so far as it may deem necessary, for the cases enumerated in this section, and for all other cases where a general law can be made applicable." Constitution of Missouri, art. 4, § 27. We should suppose that so stringent a provision would, in some of these cases, lead to the passage of general laws of doubtful utility in order to remedy the hardships of particular cases. As to when a general law can be made applicable, see Thomas v. Board of Commissioners, 5 Ind. 4; State v. Squires, 26 Iowa, 340; Johnson v. Railroad Co., 23 Ill. 202. In State v. Hitchcock, 1 Kansas, 178, it was held that the constitutional provision, that "in all cases where a general law can be made applicable, no special law shall be enacted," left a discretion with the legislature to determine the cases in which special laws should be passed. See to the same effect Gentile v. State, 29 Ind. 409, and Marks v. Trustees of Pardue University, 37 Ind. 163, overruling Thomas v. Board of Commissioners, supra. To the same effect is State v. County Court of Boone, disbursing them only for public purposes. Taxes should only be levied for those purposes which properly constitute a public burden. But what is for the public good, and what are public purposes, and what does properly constitute a public burden, are questions which the legislature must decide upon its own judgment, and in respect to which it is vested with a large discretion which cannot be controlled by the courts, except, perhaps, where its action is clearly evasive, and where, under pretence of a lawful authority, it has assumed to exercise one that is unlawful. Where the power which is exercised is legislative in its character, the courts can enforce only those limitations which the constitution imposes, and not those implied restrictions which, resting in theory only, the people have been satisfied to leave to the judgment, patriotism, and sense of justice of their representatives.1 50 Mo. 317. Compare Hess v. Pegg, 7 Nev. 23; Darling v. Rogers, 7 Kan. 592; Ex parte Pritz, 9 Iowa, 30. Where the legislature is forbidden to pass special or local laws regulating county or township business, a special act allowing and ordering payment of a particular claim is void, even though the claim, being merely an equitable one, cannot be audited by any existing board. Williams v. Bidleman, 7 Nev. 68. See Darling v. Rogers, 7 Kan. 592. An act creating a criminal court for a particular county is not in conflict with the constitutional prohibition of special legislation. Eitel v. State, 33 Ind. 201. See Matter of Boyle, 9 Wis. 264. A constitutional provision that requires all laws of a general nature to have uniform operation throughout the State is complied with in a statute applicable to all cities of a certain class having less than one hundred thousand inhabitants, though in fact there be but one city in the State of that class. Welker v. Potter, 18 Ohio, N. s. 85. See, further, Bourland v. Hildreth, 26 Cal. 162; Brooks v. Hyde, 37 Cal. 366; McAurich v. Mississippi, &c., R.R. Co., 20 Iowa, 338; Rice v. State, 3 Kansas, 141; Jackson v. Shawl, 29 Cal. 267; Gentile v. State, 29 Ind. 409; State v. Parkinson, 5 Nev. 15; Ensworth v. Albin, 46 Mo. 450. 1 State v. McCann, 21 Ohio St. 211, 212. [142] * CHAPTER VI. OF THE ENACTMENT OF LAWS. [* 130] WHEN the supreme power of a country is wielded by a single man, or by a single body of men, few questions can arise in the courts concerning the manner of its exercise, and any discussion of rules by which it is to be governed, in the enactment of laws, can be of very little practical value. For whenever the sovereign power expresses its will that a certain rule shall be established, that expression must be conclusive, whether such forms have been observed in making the declaration as are customary and proper or We may query whether the will has been declared; we may question and cross-question the words employed, to ascertain the real sense that they express; we may doubt and hesitate as to the intent; but when discovered, it must govern, and it is idle to talk of forms that should have surrounded the expression, but do not. But when the legislative power of a State is to be exercised by a department composed of two branches, or, as in most of the American States, of three branches, and these branches have their several duties marked out and prescribed by the law to which they owe their origin, and which provides for the exercise of their powers in certain modes and under certain forms, there are other questions to arise than those of the mere intent of the law-makers, and sometimes forms become of the last importance. For in such case not only is it important that the will of the law-makers be clearly expressed, but it is also essential that it be expressed in due form of law; since nothing becomes law simply and solely because men who possess the legislative power will that it shall be, unless they express their determination to that effect, in the mode pointed out by the instrument which invests them with the power, and under all the forms which that instrument has rendered essential. And if, when the constitution was adopted, there were known and settled rules and usages, forming a part of the law of the country, in reference to which the constitution has evidently been framed, and these rules and usages required the observance of particular forms, the constitution itself must also be understood as requiring them, because in assuming their existence, and [*131] being framed with reference to them, it has in effect adopted them as a part of itself, as much as if they were expressly incorporated in its provisions. Where, for an instance, the legislative power is to be exercised by two houses, and by settled and well-understood parliamentary law, these two houses are to hold separate sessions for their deliberations, and the determination of the one upon a proposed law is to be submitted to the separate determination of the other, the constitution, in providing for two houses, has evidently spoken in reference to this settled custom, incorporating it as a rule of constitutional interpretation; so that it would require no prohibitory clause to forbid the two houses from combining in one, and jointly enacting laws by the vote of a majority of all. All those rules which are of the essentials of law-making must be observed and followed; and it is only the customary rules of order and routine, such as in every deliberative body are always understood to be under its control, and subject to constant change at its will, that the constitution can be understood. to have left as matters of discretion, to be established, modified, or abolished by the bodies for whose government in non-essential matters they exist. Of the two Houses of the Legislature.1 In the enactment of laws the two houses of the legislature are of equal importance, dignity, and power, and the steps which result in laws may originate indifferently in either. This is the general rule; but as one body is more numerous than the other and more directly represents the people, and in many of the States, is renewed by more frequent elections, the power to originate all money bills, or bills for the raising of revenue, is left exclusively, by the constitutions of some of the States, with this body, in accordance The wisdom of a division of the legislative department has been demonstrated by the leading writers on constitutional law, as well as by general experience. See De Lolme, Const. of England, b. 2, c. 3; Federalist, No. 22; 1 Kent, 208; Story on Const. §§ 545-570. The early experiments in Pennsylvania and Georgia, based on Franklin's views, for which see his Works, Vol. V. p. 165, were the only ones made by any of the original States with a single house. The first Constitution of Vermont also provided for a single legislative body. |