Patterson v. Kentucky

Citation97 U.S. 501,24 L.Ed. 1115
PartiesPATTERSON v. KENTUCKY
Decision Date01 October 1878
CourtUnited States Supreme Court

ERROR to the Court of Appeals of the State of Kentucky.

The facts are stated in the opinion of the court.

Mr. Matt. H. Carpenter for the plaintiff in error.

Mr. Albert Pike, contra.

Mr. JUSTICE HARLAN delivered the opinion of the court.

Whether the final judgment of the Court of Appeals of Kentucky denies to plaintiff in error any right secured to her by the Constitution and laws of the United States, is the sole question presented in this case for our determination.

That court affirmed the judgment of an inferior State court in which, upon indictment and trial, a fine of $250 was imposed upon plaintiff in error for a violation of certain provisions of a Kentucky statute, approved Feb. 21, 1874, regulating the inspection and gauging of oils and fluids, the product of coal, petroleum, or other bituminous substances. The statute provides that such oils and fluids, by whatever name called and wherever manufactured, which may or can be used for illuminating purposes, shall be inspected by an authorized State officer, before being used, sold, or offered for sale. Such as ignite or permanently burn at a temperature of 130° Fahrenheit and upwards are recognized by the statute as standard oils, while those which ignite or permanently burn at a less temperature are condemned as unsafe for illuminating purposes. Inspectors are required to brand casks and barrels with the words 'standard oil,' or with the words 'unsafe for illuminating purposes,' as inspection may show to be proper. The statute imposes a penalty upon all who sell or offer for sale, within the State, such oils and fluids as have been condemned, the casks or barrels containing which have been branded with the words indicating such condemnation.

The specific offence charged in the indictment was that the plaintiff in error had sold, within the State, to one Davis an oil known as the Aurora oil, the casks containing which had been previously branded by an authorized inspector with the words 'unsafe for illuminating purposes.' That particular oil is the same for which, in 1867, letters-patent were granted to Henry C. Dewitt, of whom the plaintiff in error is the assignee, by assignment duly recorded as required by the laws of the United States. Upon the trial of the case it was agreed that the Aurora oil could not, by any chemical combination described in the patent, be made to conform to the standard or test required by the Kentucky statute as a prerequisite to the right, within that State, to sell, or to offer for sale, illuminating oils of the kind designated.

The plaintiff in error, as assignee of the patentee, in asserting the right to sell the Aurora oil in any part of the United States, claims that no State could, consistently with the Federal Constitution and the laws of Congress, prevent or obstruct the exercise of that right, either by express words of prohibition, or by regulations which prescribed tests to which the patented article could not be made to conform.

The Court of Appeals of Kentucky held this construction of the Constitution and the laws of the United States to be inadmissible, and in that opinion we concur.

Congress is given power to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. To that end it may, by all necessary and proper laws, secure to inventors, for limited times, the exclusive right to their inventions. That power has been exerted in the various statutes prescribing the terms and conditions upon which letters-patent may be obtained. It is true that letters-patent, pursuing the words of the statute, do, in terms, grant to the inventor, his heirs and assigns, the exclusive right to make, use, and vend to others his invention or discovery, throughout the United States and the Territories thereof. But, obviously, this right is not granted or secured, without reference to the general powers which the several States of the Union unquestionably possess over their purely domestic affairs, whether of internal commerce or of police. 'In the American constitutional system,' says Mr. Cooley, 'the power to establish the ordinary regulations of police has been left with the individual States, and cannot be assumed by the national government.' Cooley, Const. Lim. 574. While it is confessedly difficult to mark the precise boundaries of that power, or to indicate, by any general rule, the exact limitations which the States must observe in its exercise, the existence of such a power in the States has been uniformly recognized in this court. Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1; License Cases, 5 How. 504; Gilman v. Philadelphia, 3 Wall. 713; Henderson et al. v. Mayor of the City of New York et al., 92 U. S. 259; Railroad Company v. Husen, 95 id. 465; Beer Company v. Massachusetts, supra, p. 25. It is embraced in what Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, in Gibbons v. Ogden, calls that 'immense mass of legislation' which can be most advantageously exercised by the States, and over which the national authorities cannot assume supervision or control. 'If the power only extends to a just regulation of rights, with a view to the due protection and enjoyment of all, and does not deprive any one of that which is justly and properly his own, it is obvious that its possession by the State, and its exercise for the regulation of the property and actions of its citizens, cannot well constitute an invasion of national jurisdiction or afford a basis for an appeal to the protection of the national authorities.' Cooley, Const. Lim. 574. By the settled doctrines of this court the police power extends, at least, to the protection of the lives, the health, and the property of the community against the injurious exercise by any citizen of his own rights. State legislation, strictly and legitimately for police purposes, does not, in the sense of the Constitution, necessarily intrench upon any authority which has been confided, expressly or by implication, to the national government. The Kentucky statute under examination manifestly belongs to that class of legislation. It is, in the best sense, a mere police regulation, deemed essential for the protection of the lives and property of citizens. It expresses in the most solemn form the deliberate judgment of the State that burning fluids which ignite or permanently burn at less than a prescribed temperature are unsafe for illuminating purposes. Whether the policy thus pursued by the State is wise or unwise, it is not the province of the national authorities to determine. That belongs to each State, under its own sense of duty, and in view of the provisions of its own Constitution. Its action, in those respects, is beyond the corrective power of this court. That the statute of 1874 is a police regulation within the meaning of the authorities is clear from our decision in United States v. Dewitt, 9 Wall. 41. By the internal revenue act of March 2, 1867, a penalty was imposed upon any person who should mix for sale naphtha and illuminating oils, or who should knowingly sell or keep for sale, or offer for sale, such mixture, or who should sell or offer for sale oil made from petroleum for illuminating purposes, inflammable at less temperature or fire-test than 110° Fahrenheit. We held that to be simply a police regulation, relating exclusively to the internal trade of the States; that, although emanating from Congress, it could have by its own force no constitutional peration within State limits, and was without effect, except where the legislative authority of Congress excluded, territorially, all State legislation, as, for example, in the District of Columbia.

The Kentucky statute being, then, an ordinary police...

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