Northern Central Railway Company v. Maryland/Opinion of the Court

United States Supreme Court

187 U.S. 258

Northern Central Railway Company  v.  Maryland

 Argued: October 16, 1902. --- Decided: December 1, 1902

In order to confine the controversy arising on this record to the propositions upon which its decision must really rest to eliminate the questions discussed at bar, which are either irrelevant or so effectually foreclosed by prior decisions of this court as to be no longer open to controversy, the following propositions are stated:

First. Where a contract is claimed to arise from a state law, and it is held below that a subsequent statute has repealed the alleged contract, and effect is thereby given to the subsequent law, the mere question whether the alleged contract has been repealed by the subsequent law is a state, and not a Federal, question. In such a case this court concerns itself, not with the question whether the state law, from which the contract is asserted to have arisen, has been repealed, but proceeds to determine whether the repeal was void because it produced an impairment of the obligations of the contract within the purview of the Constitution of the United States. In other words, where the state court has given effect to a subsequent law, this court decides whether such effect, so given by the state court, violates the Constitution of the United States. Gulf & S. I. R. Co. v. Hewes, 183 U.S. 66, 46 L. ed. 86, 22 Sup. Ct. Rep. 26. We therefore put out of view the question whether the acts of 1854 or of 1880 were repealed by the subsequent state statutes as held by the court below, and, treating such repeal as an accomplished fact, shall determine whether the repealing acts were void because impairing the obligations of the contract relied upon, in violation of the Constitution of the United States. In considering this question, it will be borne in mind that it is elementary that where the constitution of a state reserves the right to repeal, alter, or amend, all charters granted by the legislature are subject to such provision, and therefore are wanting in that attribute of irrevocability which is essential to bring them within the intendment of the clause of the Constitution of the United States protecting contracts from impairment. The cases supporting this doctrine are so numerous that they need not be cited. We content ourselves, therefore, by referring to one of them: Citizens' Sav. Bank v. Owensboro, 173 U.S. 636, 641, 43 L. ed. 840, 842, 19 Sup. Ct. Rep. 530. It is, moreover, conclusively determined that where the constitution of a state reserves the power to repeal, alter, or amend a charter, such provision is applicable to the charter of a consolidated corporation where, as the result of the consolidation, a new corporation takes being, new stock is provided for, new franchises are conferred, and new officers appointed. In other words, that where a legislature is inhibited by the constitution from making an irrepealable charter it cannot create a new contract and bring into being a new corporation, and yet by the charter of such corporation give rise to the irrepealable contract which the constitution absolutely prohibits. To state the doctrine in another form, it is this: That where a new corporation is chartered, subject to a constitution which forbids the granting of an irrepealable right, such new corporation cannot become endowed by the effect of a legislative contract with an irrepealable right forbidden by the constitution. If one of the constituent elements of the corporation possessed, prior to the formation of the new corporation, such right, and under the assumption that the right itself passed to the new body, it loses its irrepealable character, because the new corporation is subject by the very law of its being to the provision of the constitution forbidding irrepealable grants.

Coming to apply the principles just stated to the case before us, it is apparent that unless there is something peculiar in this case which takes it from under the control of the doctrine referred to, that the court below correctly held that the new corporation created by the act of 1854 had no irrepealable contract exempting it from taxation either as the result of the act of 1854 or of the act of 1880. The positive prohibition existing in the Constitution of the state against irrepealable charter grants, both when the act of 1854 and the act of 1880 were passed, renders any other conclusion impossible. But it is insisted that, as the Constitution of 1867, which was in force when the law of 1880 was enacted, reserved the right to repeal, alter, or amend only charters granted or adopted, the act of 1880 did not come within the right to repeal or amend because it was not a charter, but a contract entered into between the state and the corporation. True, the act of 1880 was put, not in the form of a charter amendment, but in that of a contract. The lower court, after quoting from the opinion rendered by it, when the case was before it under the act of 1854 (44 Md. 162) said: 'It is to be observed that the court does not rest the inability of the legislature to grant to a corporation an irrepealable exemption from taxation upon the form or character of the particular statute then under consideration, but puts it upon the broad ground of the want of power in the legislature under the Constitution to make such a grant at all. The court certainly in effect determines that any form of law which grants to a corporation such a corporate privilege as immunity from taxation is one passed pursuant to the section of the Constitution referred to, and is therefore subject to alteration or repeal by future legislatures.'

Without pausing to consider whether, as contended, the rule as thus announced may have been in some respects too broadly stated, we think it clear that the mere form adopted by a legislature in conferring a right on a corporation cannot be controlling, for if it were so the provision of the Constitution, instead of being commanding and prohibitive, would merely be precatory or advisory. We are also clearly of the opinion that the act of 1880, in its essential nature and effect, in whatever form couched, was intended to be and necessarily operated as an amendment to the charter of the company created by the act of 1854. Such being its essential nature and necessary effect, we think it plainly came within the provisions of the Constitution of 1867, and was therefore subject to repeal, alteration, or amendment.

It is strenuously, however, insisted that this case should not be controlled by the reasons previously stated because of the following considerations: The decision of the court of appeals of Maryland under the act of 1854 (44 Md.), it is urged, was not unanimous. There was an elaborate dissent. For this reason, and because the case was open to review in this court on the question of the impairment of the obligations of the contract, it is said there was necessarily grave doubt as to the rights of the parties. In view of the foregoing conditions and of such doubt, the act of 1880 embodied but an honest effort by way of contract and compromise to close the doubtful controversy in the interest of both parties, the state on the one hand and the corporation on the other; hence the act of 1880 was not subject to repeal, alteration, or amendment. Conceding, arguendo, the premise upon which the above deduction is based, the conclusion itself is devoid of foundation. It but reiterates in another mode of statement the argument that the form in which a contract is couched, and not its substance and necessary effect, is the criterion by which to ascertain whether it is controlled by the constitutional provision forbidding irrepealable contracts. Moreover, it disregards the elementary principle that the power to grant an irrepealable right by a compromise agreement depended on the existence of the authority to make such grant by original action. The power to compromise on the subject was as limited as the power to contract originally. District of Columbia v. Bailey (1897) 171 U.S. 161, 43 L. ed. 118, 18 Sup. Ct. Rep. 868. Indeed, the entire argument upon this branch of the case, reiterated in many forms, amounts but to the contention, when ultimately considered, that because the act of 1880 is asserted to have been enacted with the view of settling what was honestly deemed to be a pending and serious controversy, it was unwise, and it may be unjust to repeal it. Pretermitting the infirmity in the proposition which naturally is suggested by the fact that shortly after the decision in 44 Md. this court decided that the possession of the rights and privileges of a former corporation did not endow a new corporation with an exemption from taxation enjoyed by the old (Morgan v. Louisiana [1876] 93 U.S. 217, 23 L. ed. 860), and putting out of view the other cases to the same effect, decided by this court prior to 1880, the proposition is untenable. It but invokes reasons of expediency or policy. Into these considerations we may not enter; we are concerned alone with the question of power, and on passing on such question cannot hold that an act which by the very terms of the state Constitution was made repealable, nevertheless engendered an irrepealable contract protected from impairment by the Constitution of the United States. Affirmed.

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