United States v. Shauver
Decision Date | 25 May 1914 |
Citation | 214 F. 154 |
Parties | UNITED STATES v. SHAUVER. |
Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Arkansas |
On Motion for Rehearing, July 9, 1914.
W. H Martin, Asst. U.S. Atty., of Hot Springs, Ark., and J. H Acklen, of Nashville, Tenn., for the United States.
E. L Westbrooke, of Jonesboro, Ark., for defendant.
The defendant demurs to the indictment in this cause, which charges him with a violation of that part of the Appropriation Act for the Department of Agriculture, approved March 4, 1913 (37 Stat. 828, 847, c. 145), known as the 'migratory birds' provision, and the regulations made by the Department of Agriculture in pursuance thereof, and which have been approved by the President. That provision reads:
In pursuance of this authority the Department of Agriculture has adopted suitable regulations, which have been approved by the President. The only ground of the demurrer is that the act is unconstitutional.
That the national Constitution is an enabling instrument, and therefore Congress possesses only such powers as are expressly or by necessary implication granted by that instrument, is not questioned. Unless, therefore, there is some provision in the national Constitution granting to Congress either expressly or by necessary implication the power to legislate on this subject, the act cannot be sustained.
The deference due from the judiciary to the other co-ordinate departments of the government has made the courts, when the constitutionality of an act of the legislative department is attacked, to yield rather than encroach on the legislative domain. Only if the question is practically free from real doubt will the courts declare an act of the Legislature unconstitutional. The fact that the statute goes to the verge of the constitutional power is not enough; it must appear clearly that it is beyond that power to justify a court to declare it void. These principles are so well settled by an unbroken line of decisions of all the American courts that it is unnecessary to cite authorities to sustain them.
It is equally well settled that as to all internal affairs the states retained their police power, which they, as sovereign nations, possessed prior to the adoption of the national Constitution, and no such powers were granted to the nation. Cooley, Const. Lim. 574; Patterson v. Kentucky, 97 U.S. 501, 503, 24 L.Ed. 1115; Covington, etc., Bridge Co. v. Kentucky, 154 U.S. 204, 210, 14 Sup.Ct. 1087, 38 L.Ed. 962; United States v. Boyer (D.C.) 85 F. 425, 434.
But it is now equally well settled that the United States does possess what is analogous to the police power, which every sovereign nation possesses, as to its own property (Camfield v. United States, 167 U.S. 518, 525, 17 Sup.Ct. 864, 42 L.Ed. 260), and to carry into effect those powers which the Constitution has conferred upon it . It is not claimed by counsel for the government that the power to enact such legislation exists under the commerce clause of the Constitution, but it is claimed that subsection 2 of section 3, art. 4, of the Constitution, which is as follows, grants the necessary power:
'The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims of the United States, or of any particular state.'
It is also claimed that it is one of those implied attributes of sovereignty in which the national government has concurrent jurisdiction with the states; that it is a dormant right in the national government; and, where the state is clearly incompetent to save itself, the national government has the right to aid. To sustain the latter proposition stress is laid on the fact that it is impossible for any state to enact laws for the protection of migratory wild game, and only the national government can do it with any fair degree of success; consequently the power must be national and vested in the Congress of the United States. A similar argument was presented to the court in Kansas v. Colorado, 206 U.S. 46, 89, 27 Sup.Ct. 655, 664 (51 L.Ed. 956), but held untenable. Mr. Justice Brewer, speaking for the court, disposed of it by saying:
This disposes of that contention.
Are migratory birds, when in a state on their usual migration, the property of the United States or of the states where they are found? If they are the property of the nation, the states would have no power to regulate, control, or prohibit the hunting or killing of them. But the rule of law which all the American courts have recognized is that animals ferae naturae, denominated as game, are owned by the states, not as proprietors, but in their sovereign capacity as the representatives and for the benefit of all their people in common. This principle has not only been maintained by all the highest courts of the states in which the question has arisen, but has had the approval of the Supreme Court of the United States in every case which has come before it. Martin v. Waddell, 16 Pet. 367, 10 L.Ed. 997; McCready v. Virginia, 94 U.S. 391, 24 L.Ed. 248; Smith v. Maryland, 18 How. 71, 74, 15 L.Ed. 269; Manchester v. Massachusetts, 139 U.S. 240, 258, 11 Sup.Ct. 559, 35 L.Ed. 159; Lawton v. Steele, 152 U.S. 133, 14 Sup.Ct. 499, 38 L.Ed. 385; Geer v. Connecticut, 161 U.S. 519, 16 Sup.Ct. 600, 40 L.Ed. 793; The Abby Dodge, 223 U.S. 166, 32 Sup.Ct. 310, 56 L.Ed. 390.
In McCready v. Virginia, it was said:
It is true that this quotation was not absolutely necessary for the determination of the issues in that case, but the question of ownership of the fish in tide water was indirectly involved, and the learned Chief Justice who evidently deemed it necessary to...
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