SUPREME COURT ON JUDICIAL LEGISLATION. 345 obligation cannot be impaired by any subsequent action of legis- lation, or decision of its courts altering the construction of the law." 1 It is a sufficient answer to the first reason that the Supreme Court of Iowa was fully competent to reverse its own decisions^ if so inclined, and that the law upon any subject cannot be said to be unsetded because it may have passed through changes. The second reason is what has made the opinion memorable, and that which concerns the present discussion. To abide firmly by Swift V. Tyson the court should have considered neither local ruling as law, but only as evidence of the law. The earlier decisions, when declared to be false evidence, lost all effect, and became as if they had never existed, and contracts based upon faith in them had no legal foundation whatever, and were entitled to no protec- tion from any tribunal. The duty of the Federal court, assuming it not to be bound by the decision of the Iowa court, would then have been to examine the question on its merits and to deliver an independent judgment on the validity of the statute relied upon. This, however, is precisely what the court did not do. It gave no consideration to the relative merits of the contradictory Iowa decisions, but announced that the earlier cases would be followed because they had induced contracts in good faith. " However," said the opinion, " we may regard the late case in Iowa as affecting the future, it can have no effect upon the past." This is language for a statute, not for a judicial decision, which, according to the doctrine of Swift v. Tyson, declares not only what the law is and shall be, but what it was. Indeed, so far as the opinion is to be regarded as evidence, the judges in the majority, if they were not consciously exceeding their lawful authority .^ acted under the im- pression that they were exercising the jurisdiction given to them by the Constitution to protect contracts. " The rule of Ohio Life and Trust Co. v. Debolt," it is said, " embraces this case." The principle of that case " applies where there is a change of judicial decision as to the constitutional power of the Legislature to enact the law. ... To hold otherwise would be as unjust as to hold 1 The rule of Gelpcke v. Dubuque has been often affirmed. Green County v. Con- ners, 109 U. S. 105; County of Ralls v. Douglass, 105 U. S. 728, 732; Olcott v. Super- visors, 16 Wall. 678; Taylor v. Ypsilanti, 105 U. S 60, 71 ; Cooley's Const. Lims. 474, 477 (4th ed.) ; Dillon's Mun. Corp. § 46. 2 '• It is the settled rule of this court in such cases to follow the decisions of the State courts. But there have been heretofore in the judicial history of this court, as doubtless there will be hereafter, many exceptional cases." i Wallace, 206.
