Courts of equity have jurisdiction to hear the complaints of
those who assert that their lands are about to be assessed and
subjected to liens by a board or commission acting in pursuance of
the provisions of a statute which has been enacted under the forms
of law, but which, it is claimed, is unconstitutional, and
therefore does not avail to confer the powers sought to be
exercised.
Page 168 U. S. 612
The sixth section of the Act of September 27, 1890, c. 1001, 26
Stat. 492, authorizing the establishment of Rock Creek Park in the
District of Columbia, does not violate the provisions of the
Constitution of the United States, and is valid.
In January, 1895, Mary Van Riswick, widow, and Avarilla Lambert,
and Martina Carr, children and heirs, of John Van Riswick,
deceased, filed a bill of complaint in the Supreme Court of the
District of Columbia against the commission, under the Rock Creek
Park Act of September 27, 1890, seeking to restrain the said
commission from assessing lands of the complainants for any portion
of the cost and expenses of locating and improving the Rock Creek
Park, for the alleged reason that the sixth section of the said
act, under which the commission was acting in proposing to make
such assessment, was unconstitutional and void.
The cause was so proceeded in that, on September 30, 1895, the
Supreme Court of the District rendered a final decree as prayed for
in the bill. From that decree an appeal was taken to the Court of
Appeals of the District of Columbia, and by that court, on March
17, 1896, the decree of the Supreme Court of the District was
affirmed. The cause was then brought to this Court on appeal.
MR. JUSTICE SHIRAS, after stating the facts in the foregoing
language, delivered the opinion of the Court.
Courts of equity undoubtedly have jurisdiction to hear the
complaints of those who assert that their lands are about to be
assessed and subjected to liens by a board or commission, acting in
pursuance of the provisions of a statute which has been enacted
under the forms of law, but which is unconstitutional, and
therefore does not avail to confer the powers sought to be
exercised.
Dows v.
Chicago, 11 Wall. 108;
Union
Pac.
Page 168 U. S. 613
Railway Co. v. Cheyenne, 113
U. S. 513;
Ogden City v. Armstrong,
168 U. S. 224; 2
Dillon's Mun. Corporations, vol. 2, ยง 922, 4th ed.
Accordingly, if, in the present case, the sixth section of the
Act of September 27, 1890, entitled "An act authorizing the
establishment of a public park in the District of Columbia," and
upon which the defendants rely for their authority to act, is
indeed unconstitutional and void for all or any of the reasons
urged against it, we think that the complainants are entitled to a
remedy by a direct proceeding in a court of equity. For the reasons
mentioned in the cases above cited and in numerous others, the
remedy at law could not be regarded as plain and adequate.
The validity of the section in question has been heretofore
considered and determined by this Court in the case of
Shoemaker v. United States, 147 U.
S. 282. The objections which in that case were ably but
ineffectually urged were, in the main, those of which we now hear.
It is true, however, that the question there arose incidentally and
by way of argument. Persons whose property was made liable to
assessment for special benefits were not ostensible parties to the
cause, nor was the question raised by any special assignment. Hence
this Court, though undoubtedly called upon to consider the validity
of the act as a whole, and in all its parts and sections, did not
deem it necessary to discuss the validity of the sixth section at
any length. In view, however, of the fact that we are now
confronted with a specific arraignment of the sixth section, and of
the further fact that the courts below, in able opinions, have held
that the section is fatally defective in form and substance, we
have felt constrained to carefully reconsider the question.
It is obvious, and we understand it to be conceded, that neither
the act nor this particular part of it can be assailed, because the
subject matter is outside of the power of Congress. But while the
general power to legislate exclusively for the District of Columbia
is not disputed, nor the competency of Congress, in the exercise of
that power, to establish a public park, it is contended that, under
the limitation upon
Page 168 U. S. 614
that power contained in the Fifth Amendment protecting the
citizen from being deprived of life, liberty, or property without
due process of law, Congress, when erecting a work which is
expressly declared to be perpetually dedicated to the use and
enjoyment of the people of the United States, should defray the
cost thereof out of the funds of the entire nation. It is further
contended in the brief of the appellees that a tax for raising a
fund for such a purpose, to be valid, ought to be levied and
apportioned as a direct tax, among the several states, according to
their respective numbers. This latter proposition, however, was not
approved by the courts below, and we need not discuss it.
Craighill v. Van Riswick, 8 App.D.C. 185.
The reasoning upon which those courts proceeded seems to have
been that, upon general principles of constitutional law, when the
works whose cost is to be defrayed by taxation are public, the
public alone should pay for them, and the present case is compared
to one where, upon the erection of a courthouse or post office, the
private property of individuals adjacent to such structure should
be specially taxed for the supposed greater convenience enjoyed of
access thereto.
Upon a final analysis, this proposition will be found to resolve
itself into a denial of the validity of special assessments in any
case where the work in question is undertaken by the public
authorities without the express assent or desire of the property
holders. The effort made to distinguish between streets and
highways, as constituting proper subjects of taxation for special
benefits, and public parks, as matters of such a general nature as
not to justify special assessment, does not appear to us to be
successful. Legislation of this character, both in respect to its
justice and its constitutional validity, has been thoroughly
discussed by the judicial tribunals of nearly every state in the
Union. We shall briefly notice a few of the leading cases.
By a statute of 1875, a board of park commissioners were
authorized to locate and lay out within the City of Boston a public
park, to take such lands as the board should deem desirable
therefor, and to assess upon any real estate in Boston
Page 168 U. S. 615
which, in the opinion of the board, should receive any benefit
or advantage from such locating and laying out, beyond the general
advantages to all real estate in the city, "a proportional share of
the expense of such location and laying out." The board purchased a
large tract of flats, over part of which the tide flowed, the rest
being marsh, and proceeded to lay out avenues, and to fill them
with gravel, and when but a small part of the area was filled, and
none of the avenues were completed, passed an order declaring that
they had taken, and did thereby take and create a public park,
certain land, being in fact that already purchased, and also passed
a further order reciting that whereas, by the previous order, a
park was located and laid out, they laid an assessment upon certain
lands benefited thereby. It was held by the Supreme Judicial Court
of Massachusetts, on a petition for a writ of certiorari by the
owners of estates so assessed to quash the assessment, that the
park was laid out within the statute, and that the court could not
say as matter of law that the estates of the petitioners had not
been benefited by what had been done at the time the assessment was
made.
Foster v. Commissioners, 133 Mass. 321;
Holt v.
Summerville, 127 Mass. 408.
In 1834, in pursuance of authority given by statute, the Common
Council of the City of Albany directed the opening of a public
square in that city. It was held by the Supreme Court of the State
of New York that the taking the grounds of individuals in a city,
to convert into a public square, is taking property for public use,
as much so as if such grounds were converted into a street, and the
fact of the damages being assessed upon the owners of adjoining
property, instead of being levied as a general tax upon the city,
is no evidence that the property is not taken for public use. In
the opinion, it was said by Chief Justice Savage:
"The second reason assigned against the constitutionality of
these proceedings is that the purposes for which the property is
thus taken are not public, because the benefit is limited to and
the expense assessed upon a few individuals. Private property is
taken for public use when it is appropriated to the
Page 168 U. S. 616
common use of the public at large. A stronger instance cannot be
given than that of a lot of an individual in a city converted into
a street. The former owner has no longer any interest in or control
over the property, but it becomes the property of the public at
large, and under the control of the public authorities. A public
square depends on the same principle. It is for public use, whether
it is intended to be traveled upon or not. The mode of compensation
for such property is not important. It was formerly out of the
public purse, but there is no injustice in requiring those
individuals to make compensation who receive from the improvement
an equivalent, or more, in the enhanced value of their own adjacent
property, and whether the number is large or small does not affect
the question."
Owners of Ground v. Albany, 15 Wend. 274.
So in 1871 it was held by the Court of Appeals of New York, in
the case of the erection of a public park in the City of Brooklyn,
that lands taken for such a purpose are taken for a public use, and
the right to assess benefits upon adjacent property was assumed as
unquestionable.
Brooklyn Park Com. v. Armstrong, 45 N.Y.
234;
In re New York Central Park, 63 Barb. 282;
s.c., 99 N.Y. 569. The validity of laws authorizing the
condemnation of lands for the purpose of public parks has been
affirmed by the Supreme Court of Illinois,
People v.
Williams, 51 Ill. 63;
Cook v. South Park Com., 61
Ill. 115;
West Chicago Park Com. v. Western Union Tel.
Co., 103 Ill. 33, and by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania,
Mercer v. Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad
Co., 36 Penn.St. 99, and by the Supreme Court of Missouri,
St. Louis County v. Griswold, 58 Mo. 175. Numerous other
cases to the same effect will be found collected in Dillon's Mun.
Corp. vol. 2, sec. 643, 4th ed.
That the act dedicates and sets apart this park "for the benefit
and enjoyment of the people of the United States" does not, as we
think, make it so far a work
sui generis as to take it out
of the range of the principles of the foregoing cases. The
residents and property holders of the District of Columbia must be
regarded as coming within the class of beneficiaries,
Page 168 U. S. 617
and, so far from being injured by the declaration that the park
shall also have a national character, it is apparent that thereby
the welfare of the inhabitants of the District will be promoted.
Whatever tends to increase the attractiveness of the City of
Washington as a place of permanent temporary residence will operate
to enhance the value of the private property situated therein or
adjacent thereto.
If, then, there be no solid ground of distinction between other
works of public improvement and the public park designed by this
legislation as proper subjects for the application of the rule of
assessment for special benefits, it will not be necessary for us to
enter at large upon the subject apart from that supposed
distinction. That has been so recently and so fully discussed by
this Court in the case of
Bauman v. Ross, 167 U.
S. 548, that nothing remains to be added. It may be
proper to observe that the decision in that case was not announced
till after the judgment in the courts below in the present case had
been entered.
Having reached the conclusion, then, that the sixth section of
the Rock Creek Park Act is not invalid for want of conformity to
constitutional principles, we think it follows that the decrees of
the courts below should be reversed, and the bill of complaint be
dismissed.
The other objections, so forcibly dwelt on, are all questions of
construction and administration, and should be permitted to arise
and be determined in the regular procedure of the court to which
Congress has assigned the duty of carrying the provisions of the
act into effect. It may turn out that the practical difficulties
anticipated may disappear when dealt with by that court to which
power is given to
"hear and determine all matters connected with said assessment,
and to revise, correct, amend, and conform said assessment, in
whole or in part, or order a new assessment."
It does not yet appear that these appellees will, when final
action shall have been taken, have any substantial grounds of
complaint. The difficulties of construing the act are not
necessarily in the act itself, but in its application to the
subject matter. Its provisions are somewhat vague and obscure, and
it is possible that further legislation
Page 168 U. S. 618
may be found requisite to carry out the intentions of Congress.
But such questions are not now before us for determination. Should
errors supervene in the administration of the act, parties affected
will have redress by appeal.
We adopt the observation made in the dissenting opinion in the
Court of Appeals.
"There can be no reason or propriety in appealing to a court of
equity to restrain proceedings that are being conducted in other
courts, competent to construe the statutes under which they act,
and to decide every question that may arise in the course of the
proceeding. To allow litigations to be thus diverted tends to the
multiplication of litigation, and the production of unnecessary
delay and expense, to say nothing of the unnecessary vexation to
parties."
The decree of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the
cause is remanded, with directions to said court to reverse the
decree of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, and to
remand the cause to that court, with directions to dismiss the bill
of complaint.