384 HARVARD LAW REVIEW, engaged in butchering in New Orleans brought actions in the State courts to test the constitutionality of this act, and those actions were afterwards carried to the Supreme Court of the United States. It was there contended that the act violated the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments, — the former by creating an " involuntary servitude," the latter by depriving the plaintiffs of their " privileges and immunities " as citizens of the United States, of the " equal protection of the laws," and of property without process of law. The court sustained the act, overruling all the above objections. Three judges, however, filed dissenting opin- ions, and each .had something to say about the meaning of the term " Hberty." Mr. Justice Bradley, in discussing the meaning of the terms
- privileges and immunities," quotes the thirty-ninth article of
Magna Charta, and then says : — English constitutional writers expound this article as rendering life, liberty, and property inviolable, except by due process of law. This is the very right which the plaintiffs in error claim in this case. Another of these rights was that of Habeas Corpus, or the right of having any invasion of personal liberty judicially examined into, at once, by a competent judicial magistrate. Blackstone classifies these fundamental rights under three heads, as the absolute rights of individ- uals, to wit : the right of personal security, the right of personal liberty, and the right of private property. . . . The Declaration of Independ- ence lays the foundation of our national existence upon the broad proposition " That all men are created equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights ; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'^ . . . Rights to life, liberty, and property are equivalent* to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Farther on, referring specially to the life, liberty, and property clause, the same learned judge says : — In my view, a law which prohibits a large class of citizens from adopting a lawful employment, or from following a lawful employment previously adopted, does deprive them of liberty as well as property, without due process of law. This right of choice is a portion of their liberty ; their occupation is their property. Mr. Justice Swayne took a similar view : —
