Territory Hawai`i v. Miguel

• Decision Date: 20 September 1907
• Parties: TERRITORY OF HAWAII v. JACINTHO MIGUEL.
• Court: Hawaii Supreme Court

18 Haw. 402

TERRITORY OF HAWAII

v.JACINTHO MIGUEL.

Supreme Court of the Territory of Hawai‘i.

Argued September 6, 1907.

Decided September 20, 1907.

APPEAL FROM DISTRICT MAGISTRATE, HONOLULU.

Syllabus by the Court

Constitutional questions raised by persons not affected by the alleged unconstitutionality are not considered.

The boards of license commissioners authorized by Act 119, Session Laws of 1907, entitled “An Act To Regulate The Sale Of Intoxicating Liquors, Repealing Act 67 Of The Session Laws Of 1905,” are not courts.

Act 119, Session Laws of 1907, embraces but one subject which is sufficiently expressed in its title.

The refusal of a license under Act 119, to one who has on hand intoxicating liquors bought while holding a license under a former act, which, on termination of the license, cannot be sold by him, is not a taking of his property without due process of law.

E. C. Peters (C. R. Hemenway, Attorney General, with him on the brief,) for the Territory.

T. M. Harrison for defendant.

HARTWELL, C.J., WILDER AND BALLOU, JJ.

OPINION OF THE COURT BY HARTWELL, C.J.

The defendant was charged July 8, 1907, before the district magistrate of Honolulu with selling in Honolulu July 6, 1907, certain intoxicating liquor, known as beer, contrary to the provisions of Act 119, Laws of 1907. He admitted the selling without a license. The prosecution admitted that he held a license under Act 67, Laws of 1905, which expired June 30, 1907, and that the beer was part of the stock held by him while holding the license; that he applied for a license under Act 119 and was refused by the board of license commissioners; also that before June 30, 1907, he applied to the board to exchange his license for a license under Act 119 and was refused, each application being in the form required by Act 119. The defendant was found guilty and sentenced to a fine of $100 and costs $1, from which judgment he appealed to this court on points of law, in substance, as follows: (1) In providing for appointment of a board of license commissioners with authority, in their discretion, to refuse or grant applications for licenses and to take evidence upon the applications with no appeal from their decisions, the act makes the board a court with judicial powers and functions whose acts are not subject to review or control by any other court; as the legislature has no authority to create any but inferior courts (Sec. 81, Org. Act) the board is unauthorized by law; (2) the act deprives the defendant of his property without due process of law, contrary to the 14th amendment, he being prevented by its operation from disposing, after the expiration of his license, of the stock of liquors acquired by him while holding a license under the act of 1905; (3) the act authorizes the board of license commissioners to refuse to grant any license and therefore is a probibitory law, and yet its title, “An Act To Regulate The Sale Of Spirituous Liquors, Repealing Act 67 Of The Session Laws Of 1905,” does not suggest the subject and therefore the law is invalid by Sec. 45 of the Organic Act requiring that “each law shall embrace but one subject which shall be expressed in its title;” (4) the act, in requiring higher license fees for the sale of liquors manufactured out of the Territory than for those manufactured in the Territory by the licensee, violates Sec. 2 of Art. 4 of the Constitution giving to citizens of each state “all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states,” and encroaches upon the exclusive power of congress to regulate commerce.

As the defendant, not being a foreign manufacturer, has not brought himself within the class who would be affected by the alleged unconstitutional discriminations, the fourth ground of appeal will not be considered.

“There is a point beyond which this court does not consider arguments of this sort for the purpose of invalidating the tax laws of a State on constitutional grounds. This limit has been fixed in many cases. It is that unless the party setting up the unconstitutionality of the state law belongs to the class for whose sake the constitutional protection is given, or the class primarily protected, this court does not listen to his objections, and will not go into imaginary cases, notwithstanding the seeming logic of the position that it must do so, because if for any reason, or as against any class embraced, the law is unconstitutional, it is void as to all.” Hatch v. Reardon, 204 U. S. 460.

There is no obvious reason–no distinction based upon legislative objects which requires that a law to regulate sales of intoxicating liquors should be held to be less immune than a tax law from attack upon its constitutionality by persons not directly injured by the portions of the law alleged by them to be unconstitutional.

(1) Upon the defendant's contention that the board of license commissioners is an unauthorized body being a court and under the supervision of no other tribunal, it is to be observed that courts established for administration of public justice may have statutory jurisdiction over the subject of granting or refusing licenses for the sale of intoxicating liquors or the jurisdiction may be given to a designated official or board which does not thereby become a court. “The judicial power of the Territory,” intended by the Organic Act, can be vested only “in one supreme court, circuit courts, and in such inferior courts as the legislature may from time to time establish.” The inferior courts with which judicial power of the Territory may be vested do not, in the sense in which the term is used in the Organic Act, include boards or commissioners or supervisors who perform certain functions of a judicial nature, it is true, but are not courts either in the popular or technical sense of the term.

In determining whether to “grant, refuse, suspend, revoke, regulate and control licenses” the board may subpoena witnesses, administer oaths to them and take their testimony, and although this is a judicial function the right to exercise it is not of itself sufficient to constitute the board a court. Such bodies as boards of county supervisors, the board of health, boards of registration of voters, boards of inspectors of elections, or agriculture and forestry, animal inspectors, dental examiners, equalization of taxes, medical examiners, prison inspectors and of education may be authorized by statute to administer oaths touching any matter or thing whereof they have jurisdiction or cognizance by law and to decide finally and without appeal such matters as properly come within their jurisdiction, and yet it would be a misnomer to classify such boards as courts of justice. They would be lawful bodies even if congress had enacted that no court could be established by the territorial legislature and that the judicial power of the Territory should be vested solely in the supreme, circuit and district courts. See Ins. & Lumber Co. v. Macfarlane, 14 Haw. 489. Furthermore, the act (Sec.4), in declaring that “the exercise of the power, authority and discretion by this act vested in the board shall be final in each case and shall not be reviewable by, or appealable to, any court or tribunal,” does not make the board independent of judicial supervision. Its power, while “subject only to the limitations and directions in this act contained,” is strictly subordinate to those limitations and directions. If it assumes to do anything which is unauthorized by the act or declines to do what the act requires of it, observance of the law will be required by judicial authority when properly invoked. No review may be possible as long as the board observes the limitations and directions contained in the act, and yet the wholesome...