Butchers' Union Slaughter-House Live-Stock Landing Company v. Crescent Slaughter-House Company/Concurrence Field

by Stephen Johnson Field

United States Supreme Court

111 U.S. 746

Butchers' Union Slaughter-House Live-Stock Landing Company  v.  Crescent Slaughter-House Company

FIELD, J., concurring.

I concur in the doctrine declared in the opinion of the court, that the legislature cannot, by contract with an individual or corporation, restrain, diminish, or surrender its power to enact laws for the preservation of the public health or the protection of the public morals. This is a principle of vital importance, and its habitual observance is essential to the wise and valid execution of the trust committed to the legislature. But there are some provisions in the act of Louisiana upon which the appellees rely that have not been referred to, and which, from the interest excited by the decision rendered when that act was before us in the Slaughter-house Cases, should be mentioned in connection with the views now expressed. 16 Wall. 36. No one of the judges who then disagreed with the majority of the court denied that the states possessed the fullest power ever claimed by the most earnest advocate of their reserved rights, to prescribe regulations affecting the health, the good order, the morals, the peace, and the safety of society within their respective limits. When such regulations do not conflict with any constitutional inhibition or natural right, their validity cannot be successfully controverted. The general government was not formed to interfere with or control them. No aid was required from any external authority for their enforcement. It was only for matters which concerned all the states, and which could not be efficiently or advantageously managed by them separately, that a general and common government was desired. And the recent amendments to the constitution have not changed nor diminished their previously existing power to legislate respecting the public health and public morals. But though this power rests with them, it cannot be admitted that, under the pretense of providing for the public health or public morals, they can encroach upon rights which those amendments declare shall not be impaired. The act of Louisiana required that the slaughtering of cattle and the preparation of animal food for market should be done outside of the limits of the city of New Orleans. It was competent to make this requirement, and, furthermore, to direct that the animals, before being slaughtered, should be inspected, in order to determine whether they were in a fit condition to be prepared for food. The dissenting judges in the Slaughte -house Cases found no fault with these provisions, but, on the contrary, approved of them. Had the act been limited to them, there would have been no dissent from the opinion of the majority. But it went a great way beyond them. It created a corporation, and gave to it an exclusive right for 25 years to keep, within an area of 1,145 square miles, a place where alone animals intended for slaughter could be landed and sheltered, and where alone they could be slaughtered and their meat prepared for market. It is difficult to understand how in a district embracing a population of a quarter of a million, any conditions of health can require that the preparation of animal food should be intrusted to a single corporation for 25 years, or how in a district of such extent there can be only one place in which animals can, with safety to the public health, be sheltered and slaughtered. In the grant of these exclusive privileges a monopoly of an ordinary employment and business was created. A monopoly is defined 'to be an institution or allowance from the sovereign power of the state, by grant, commission, or otherwise, to any person or corporation, for the sole buying, selling, making, working, or using of anything whereby any person or persons, bodies politic or corporate, are sought to be restrained of any freedom or liberty they had before or hindered in their lawful trade,' All grants of this kind are void at common law, because they destroy the freedom of trade, discourage labor and industry, restrain persons from getting an honest livelihood, and put it in the power of the grantees to enhance the price of commodities. They are void because they interfere with the liberty of the individual to pursue a lawful trade or employment.

The oppressive nature of the principle upon which the monopoly here was granted will more clearly appear if it be applied to other vocations than that of keeping cattle and of preparing animal food for market,-to the ordinary trades and callings of life,-to the making of bread, the raising of vegetables, the manufacture of shoes and hats, and other articles of daily use. The granting of an exclusive right to engage in such vocations would be repudiated in all communities as an invasion of common right. The state undoubtedly may require many kinds of business to be carried on beyond the thickly settled portions of a city, or even entirely without its limits, especially when attendant odors or noises affect the health or disturb the peace of the neighborhood; but the exercise of this necessary power does not warrant granting to a particular class or to a corporation a monopoly of the business thus removed. It may be that, for the health or safety of a city, the manufacture of beer, or soap, or the smelting of ores, or the casting of machinery should be carried on without its limits, yet it would hardly be contended that the power thus to remove the business beyond certain limits would authorize the granting of a monopoly of it to any one or more persons. And if not a monopoly in business of this character, how can a monopoly for like reasons be granted in the business of preparing animal food for market, or of yarding and sheltering cattle intended for slaughter?

As in our intercourse with our fellow-men certain principles of morality are assumed to exist, without which society would be impossible, so certain inherent rights lie at the foundation of all action, and upon a recognition of them alone can free institutions be maintained. These inherent rights have never been more happily expressed than in the declaration of independence, that new evangel of liberty to the people: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident'-that is, so plain that their truth is recognized upon their mere statement-'that all men are endowed'-not by edicts of emperors, or deerees of parliament, or acts of congress, but 'by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.'-that is, rights which cannot be bartered away, or given away, or taken away, except in punishment of crime-'and tha among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and to secure these'-not grant them, but secure them-'governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.' Among these inalienable rights, as proclaimed in that great document, is the right of men to pursue their happiness, by which is meant the right to pursue any lawful business or vocation, in any manner not inconsistent with the equal rights of others, which may increase their prosperity or develop their faculties, so as to give to them their highest enjoyment. The common business and callings of life, the ordinary trades and pursuits, which are innocuous in themselves, and have been followed in all communities from time immemorial, must therefore be free in this country to all alike upon the same conditions. The right to pursue them, without let or hinderance, except that which is applied to all persons of the same age, sex, and condition, is a distinguishing privilege of citizens of the United States, and an essential element of that freedom which they claim as their birthright. It has been well said that 'the property which every man has in his own labor, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of the poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his own hands, and to hinder his employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper, without injury to his neighbor, is a plain violation of this most sacred property. It is a manifest encroachment upon the just liberty both of the workman and of those who might be disposed to employ him. As it hinders the one from working at what he thinks proper, so it hinders the others from employing whom they think proper.' Smith, Wealth Nat. bk. 1, c. 10.

In this country it has seldom been held, and never in so odious a form as is here claimed, that an entire trade and business could be taken from citizens and vested in a single corporation. Such legislation has been regarded everywhere else as inconsistent with civil liberty. That exists only where every individual has the power to pursue his own happiness according to his own views, unrestrained except by equal, just, and impartial laws. The act of Lousiana compelled more than a thousand persons to abandon their regular business, and to surrender it to a corporation to which was given an exclusive right to pursue it for 25 years. What was lawful to these thousand persons the day before the law took effect was unlawful the day afterwards. With what intense indignation would a law be regarded that should, in like manner, turn over the common trades of the community to a single corporation. I cannot believe that what is termed in the declaration of independence a Godgiven and an inalienable right can be thus ruthlessly taken from the citizen, or that there can be any abridgment of that right except by regulations alike affecting all persons of the same age, sex, and condition. It cannot be that a state may limit to a specified number of its people the right to practice law, the right to practice medicine, the right to preach the gospel, the right to till the soil, or to pursue particular business or trades, and thus parcel out to different parties the various vocations and callings of life. The first section of the fourteenth amendment was, among other things, designed to prevent all discriminating legislation for the benefit of some to the disparagement of others; and when rightly enforced as other prohibitions upon the state, not by legislation of a penal nature, but through the courts, no one will complain. The disfranchising provisions of the third section naturally created great hostility to the whole amendment. They were regarded by many wise and good men as impolitic, harsh, and cruel; and the manner in which the first section has been enforced by penal enactments against legislators and governors has engendered wide-spread and earnest hostility to it. Communities, like individuals, resent even fa ors ungraciously bestowed. The appropriate mode of enforcing the amendment is, in my judgment, that which has been applied to other previously existing constitutional prohibitions, such as the one against a state passing a law impairing the obligation of contracts, or a bill of attainder, or an ex post facto law. The only provisions deemed necessary to annul legislation of this kind have been such as facilitated proceedings for that purpose in the courts; no other can be appropriate against the action of a state. Thus enforced, there would be little objection to the provisions of the first section of the amendment. No one would object to the clause forbidding a state to abridge the privileges and immunities of citizen of the United States; that is, to take away or impair their fundamental rights. No one would object to the clause which declares that no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor to the provision which declares that no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. If the first section of the amendment is thus applied as a restriction against the impairment of fundamental rights, it will not transfer to the federal government the protection of all private rights, as is sometimes supposed, any more than the inhibition against impairing the obligation of contracts transfers to the federal government the cognizauce of all contracts. It does not limit the subjects upon which the states can legislate. Upon every matter, in relation to which previously to its adoption they could have acted, they may still act. They can now, as then, legislate to promote health, good order, and peace, to develop their resources, enlarge their industries, and advance their properity. It only inhibits discriminating and partial enactments,-favoring some to the impairment of the rights of others. The principal, if not the sole, purpose of its prohibitions is to prevent any arbitrary invasion by state authority of the rights of person and property, and to secure to every one the right to pursue his happiness unrestrained, except by just, equal, and impartial laws.

The first section of the amendment is stripped of all its protective force, if its application be limited to the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States as distinguished from citizens of the states, and thus its prohibition be extended only to the abridgment or impairment of such rights, as the right to come to the seat of government, to secure any claim they may have upon that government, to transact any business with it, to seek its protection, to share its offices, to engage in administering its functions, to have free access to its seaports, to demand its care and protection over life, liberty, and property on the high seas, or within the jurisdiction of a foreign government, the right to peaceably assemble and petition for redress of grievances, and the right to use the navigable waters of the United States,-which are specified in the opinion in the Slaughter-house Cases as the special rights of such citizens. If thus limited, nothing was accomplished by adopting it. The states could not previously have interfered with these privileges and immunities, or any other privileges and immunities which citizens enjoyed under the coustitution and laws of the United States. Any attempted impairment of them could have been as successfully resisted then as now. The constitution and laws of the United States were as much then as now the supreme law of the land, which all officers of the state governments were then, as now, bound to obey.

While, therefore, I fully concur in the decision of the court that it was entirely competent for the state to annul the monopoly features of the original act incorporating the plaintiff, I am of opinion that the act, in creating the monopoly in an ordinary employment and business, was to that extent against common right, and void.