[DOWNLOAD] "Freeborn v. Smith" by United States Supreme Court # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Freeborn v. Smith
- Author : United States Supreme Court
- Release Date : January 01, 1864
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 61 KB
Description
Messrs. Cope and Browning for the motion to dismiss, &c.: 1. As to the jurisdiction, our position is that the act is a retrospective enactment interfering with vested rights. Certainly it attempts to confer on this court jurisdiction to review judgments which, by law, at the time of its passage were final and absolute. The necessary result of maintaining it would be to disturb and impair these judgments, unsettle what had been previously settled, and compel the parties to litigate anew matters already definitively adjudicated. There is no higher evidence that rights have vested than a final judgment solemnly confirming them. Law is defined to be a rule of conduct; and to call an enactment which undertakes to deal with past transactions, and subject them to new requirements and conditions as tests of their legality, a rule of conduct, is to confound all rational ideas on the subject. Ex post facto laws are expressly prohibited by the Constitution, but the courts would hardly enforce enactments of this nature even in the absence of any constitutional prohibition; because, being retrospective, and providing for the punishment of acts not illegal when committed, they are not laws in the true sense of that term, and not, therefore, within the sphere of legislative authority. The principle is entirely applicable to civil causes, and prevents any injurious intermeddling with past transactions. Legislative power begins and ends with the power to enact laws, and in respect to the conduct of men in their dealings and obligations, and in the acquisition of property, no valid law can be enacted which undoes or unsettles that which was legally done or settled under a previous law.
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