Barber v. Barber (62 U.S. 582)/Dissent Taney

by Roger B. Taney

United States Supreme Court

62 U.S. 582

HIRAM BARBER, Appellant,  v.  HULDAH A. BARBER, by her Next Friend, George Cronkhite.

 Argued: January 19, 1859. --- Decided: March 11, 1859.

Mr. Chief Justice TANEY, Mr. Justice DANIEL, and Mr. Justice CAMPBELL, dissented.

From several considerations, which to me appear essentially important, I am constrained to differ in opinion with the majority of the court in this case.

1. With respect to the authority of the courts of the United States to adjudicate upon a controversy and between parties such as are presented by the record before us. Those courts, by the Constitution and laws of the United States, are invested with jurisdiction in controversies between citizens of different States. In the exercise of this jurisdiction, we are forced to inquire, from the facts disclosed in the cause, whether during the existence of the marriage relation between these parties the husband and wife can be regarded as citizens of different States? Whether, indeed, by any regular legal deduction consistent with that relation, the wife can, as to her civil or political status, be regarded as a citizen or person?

By Coke and Blackstone it is said: 'That by marriage, the husband and wife become one person in law; that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated or consolidated into that of the husband, under whose wing and protection she performs everything. Upon this principle of union in husband and wife, depend almost all the rights, duties, and disabilities, that either of them acquire by the marriage. For this reason, a man cannot grant anything to his wife, nor enter into a covenant with her, for the grant would be to suppose her separate existence, and to covenant with her would be only to covenant with himself; and therefore it is generally true, that all compacts made between husband and wife, when single, are voided by the intermarriage.' (Co. Lit., 112; Bla. Com., vol. 1, p. 442.) So, too, Chancellor Kent, (vol. 2, p. 128:) 'The legal effects of marriage are generally deducible from the principle of the common law, by which the husband and wife are regarded as one person, and her legal existence and authority in a degree lost and suspended during the existence of the matrimonial union.'

Such being the undoubted law of marriage, how can it be conceived that pending the existence of this relation the unity it creates can be reconciled with separate and independent capacities in that unity, such as belong to beings wholly disconnected, and each sui juris? Now, the divorce a mensa et thoro does not sever the matrimonial tie; on the contrary, it recognises and sustains that tie, and the allowance of alimony arises from and depends upon reciprocal duties and obligations involved in that connection. The wife can have no claim to alimony but as wife, and such as arises from the performance of her duties as wife; the husband sustains no responsibilites save those which flow from his character and obligations as husband, presupposing the existence and fulfilment of conjugal obligations on the part of the wife. It has been suggested that by the regulations of some of the States a married woman, after separation, is permitted to choose a residence in a community or locality different from that in which she resided anterior to the separation, and different from the residence of the husband. It is presumed, however, that no regulation, express or special, can be requisite in order to create such a permission. This would seem to be implied in the divorce itself; the purpose of which is, that the wife should no longer remain sub polestate viri, but should be freed from the control which had been abused, and should be empowered to select a residence and such associations as would be promotive of her safety and her comfort. But whether expressed in the decree for separation, or implied in the divorce, such a privilege does not destroy the marriage relation; much less does it remit the parties to the position in which they stood before marriage, and create or revive ante-nuptial, civil, or political rights in the wife. Both parties remain subject to the obligations and duties of husband and wife. Neither can marry during the lifetime of the other, nor do any act whatsoever which is a wrong upon the conjugal rights and obligations of either. From these views it seems to me to follow, that a married woman cannot during the existence of the matrimonial relation, and during the life of the husband the wife cannot be remitted to the civil or political position of a feme sole, and cannot therefore become a citizen of a State or community different from that of which her husband is a member.

2. It is not in accordance with the design and operation of a Government having its origin in causes and necessities, political, general, and external, that it should assume to regulate the domestic relations of society; should, with a kind of inquisitorial authority, enter the habitations and even into the chambers and nurseries of private families, and inquire into and pronounce upon the morals and habits and affections or antipathies of the members of every household. If such functions are to be exercised by the Federal tribunals, it is important to inquire by what rule or system of proceeding, or according to what standard, either of ethics or police, they are to be enforced. Within the range subjected to the political, general, and uniform control of the Federal Constitution, there are numerous commonwealths, and within these are ordinances much more numerous and diversified, for the definition and enforcement of the duties of their respective members. Now, to which of these ordinances, or to which of these various systems of regulation, will the Federal authorities resort as a source of jurisdiction, or as a rule of decision, especially when it is borne in mind that it is only between members of different communities, persons legitimately subject to such separate rules of obligation or policy, that the tribunals of the Federal Government have cognizance; when, too, it is recollected that the Federal Government is clothed with no power to execute the laws of the States. The Federal tribunals can have no power to control the duties or the habits of the different members of private families in their domestic intercourse. This power belongs exclusively to the particular communities of which those families form parts, and is essential to the order and to the very existence of such communities.

It has been suggested, that by the decree for separation a mensa et thoro, the husband and wife have become citizens of different States, and that the allowance to the wife is in the nature of a debt, which, as a citizen of a different State, she may enforce against the husband in the Federal courts. This suggestion, to my mind, involves two obvious fallacies. The first is the assumption, that by the decree the wife is made a citizen at all, or a person sui juris, whilst yet she is wife, still bound by her conjugal obligations, the faithful observance of which, on her part, is the foundation of her claim to maintenance as wife, and which claim she would forfeit at any time by a violation of these obligations. Indeed, the form of her application is an acknowledgment that she is not sui juris, and not released from her conjugal disabilities and obligations, for she sues by prochein ami.

The second error in the position before mentioned is shown by the character and objects of the allowance made as alimony to a wife. This allowance is not in the nature of an absolute debt. It is not unconditional, but always dependent upon the personal merits and conduct of the wife-merits and conduct which must exist and continue, in order to constitute a valid claim to such an allowance. This allowance might unquestionably be forfeited upon proof of criminality or misconduct of the wife, who would not be permitted to enforce the payment of that to which it should be shown she had lost all just claim; and this inhibition, it is presumed, might embrace as well a portion of that allowance at any time in arrears, as its demand in future. The essential character, then, of this allowance, viz: its being always conditional and dependent, both for its origin and continuation, upon the circumstances which produced or justified it, is demonstrative of the propriety and the necessity of submitting it to the control of that authority whose province it was to judge of those circumstances. That authority can exist nowhere but with the power and the right to control the private and domestic relations of life. The Federal Government has no such power; it has no commission of censor morum over the several States and their people.

But, irrespective of the disability of the wife as a party, I hold that the courts of the United States, as courts of chancery, cannot take cognizance of cases of alimony.

It has been repeatedly ruled by this court, that the jurisdiction and practice in the courts of the United States in equity are not to be governed by the practice in the State courts, but that they are to be apprehended and exercised according to the principles of equity, as distinguished and defined in that country from which we derive our knowledge of those principles. Such is the law as announced in the cases of Robenson v. Campbell, (3 Wheaton, 212;) of the United States v. Howland, (4 Wheaton, 108;) of Boyle v. Zacharie & Turner, (6 Peters, 648.) It is repeated in the cases of Story v. Livingston, (13 Peters, 359,) and of Gaines v. Relf, (15 Peters, 9.) Now, it is well known that the court of chancery in England does not take cognizance of the subject of alimony, but that this is one of the subjects within the cognizance of the ecclesiastical court, within whose peculiar jurisdiction marriage and divorce are comprised. Of these matters, the court of chancery in England claims no cognizance. Upon questions of settlement or of contract connected with marriages, the court of chancery will undertake the enforcement of such contracts, but does not decree alimony as such, and independently of such contracts.

In Roper on the Law of Baron and Feme, (vol. 2, p. 307,) it is stated that Lord Loughborough, in a case in 1 Vesey, jun., 195, is reported to have said, that if a wife applied to the court of chancery upon a supplicavit for security of the peace against her husband, and it was necessary that she should live apart as incidental to that, the chancellor will allow her separate maintenance. That this passage has been quoted by Sir William Grant in 10 Ves., 397, and that the same opinion was advanced in the case of Lambert v. Lambert, (2 Brown's Parliamentary Cases, p. 26.) 'But,' continues this writer, 'there seems to be no reported instance of such a jurisdiction, and it would be inconsistent with the object and form of the writ of supplicavit;' and he concludes with the position that 'the wife can only obtain a separate maintenance in the ecclesiastical courts where alimony is decreed to be paid during the pendency of any suit between husband and wife, and after its termination, if it ends in a sentence of separation on the ground of the husband's misconduct.'

From the above views, it would seem to follow, inevitably, that as the jurisdiction of the chancery in England does not extend to or embrace the subjects of divorce and alimony, and as the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States in chancery is bounded by that of the chancery in England, all power or cognizance with respect to those subjects by the courts of the United States in chancery is equally excluded.

It has been said that, there being no ecclesiastical court in the United States, many of the States have assumed jurisdiction over the subjects of divorce and alimony, through the agency of their courts of equity. The answer to this suggestion is, first, that it concedes the distinction between the character and powers of these different tribunals. In the next place, it may have been that the jurisdiction exercised by the State courts may have been conferred by express legislative grant; or it may have been assumed by those tribunals, and acquiesced in from considerations of convenience, or from mere toleration; but whether expressly conferred upon the State courts, or tacitly assumed by them, their example and practice cannot be recognised as sources of authority by the courts of the United States. The origin and the extent of their jurisdiction must be sought in the laws of the United States, and in the settled rules and principles by which those laws have bound them.