1. In all the states, from the beginning down to the
establishment of the Articles of Confederation, the citizens
possessed the right, inherent in citizens of all free governments,
peacefully to dwell within the limits of their respective states,
to move at will from place to place therein, and to have free
ingress thereto and egress therefrom. A consequent authority
resided in the states to forbid and punish violations of this
right. P.
254 U. S.
293.
2. Uniformity of this right was secured by the Articles of
Confederation, not by lodging power in Congress to deal with the
subject, but by subjecting the continued state power to the
limitation that it should not be used to discriminate, Art. IV
providing that the free inhabitants of each state, with certain
exceptions, should be entitled to all the privileges and immunities
of free citizens in the several states, and that the people of each
state should have free ingress and regress to and from any other
state. P.
254 U. S.
294.
3. The Constitution, by Art. IV, § 2, plainly intended to
preserve and enforce this limitation imposed upon the several
states by Art. IV of the Articles of Confederation, and, in so
doing necessarily assumed that the states possessed the authority
to protect the right of free residence, ingress, and regress as a
part of their reserved power.
Id., .
4. The Constitution does not guarantee this right against
wrongful interference by individuals, but only against
discriminatory action by states. P.
254 U. S. 297.
Crandall v.
Nevada, 6 Wall. 35, distinguished.
Page 254 U. S. 282
5. A conspiracy to deprive citizens of the United States of
their right to remain in a particular state by seizing them and
deporting them to another state is not an offense under § 19 of the
Criminal Code.
254 F. 611 affirmed.
The case is stated in the opinion.
Page 254 U. S. 292
MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court.
The case is here under the Criminal Appeals Act to directly
review a judgment quashing an indictment against the 25 persons who
are defendants in error. The indictment contained four counts, but,
as the fourth is now abandoned by the government, we need not
consider it.
The first count charged the accused with conspiring, in
violation of § 19 of the Criminal Code, to injure, oppress,
threaten, or intimidate 221 named persons, alleged to be citizens
of the United States residing in Arizona, of rights or privileges
secured to them by the Constitution or laws of the United States --
that is to say, the right and privilege pertaining to citizens of
said state peacefully to reside and remain therein and to be immune
from unlawful deportation from that state to another. And the overt
acts alleged were: the arming of the conspirators, the seizure and
holding of the persons named until, by means of a railway train
procured for that purpose, they were forcibly transported into New
Mexico, and in that state released under threat of death or great
bodily harm should they ever return to the State of Arizona.
The second count was the same as the first, except that only 25
of the persons alleged in the first count to have been injured were
named, and they were stated to be citizens of the United States
residing in, but not citizens of, the State of Arizona.
The third count was also identical with the first, except that
it embraced only 196 of the injured persons named in
Page 254 U. S. 293
the first count and one additional person not therein named, all
being declared to be citizens of the United States and of the State
of Arizona, residing in that state.
The court quashed the indictment on the ground that no power had
been delegated by the Constitution to the United States to forbid
and punish the wrongful acts complained of, as the right to do so
was exclusively within the authority reserved by that instrument to
the several states. As the entire case will be disposed of by
testing the accuracy of this view, we come immediately to consider
that subject.
In argument, the asserted error in the conclusion is based not
upon the direct result of any particular provision of the
Constitution, but upon implications arising from that instrument as
a whole, the conditions existing at the time of its adoption, and
the consequences inevitably produced from the creation by it of the
government of the United States. A wide field of inquiry common to
all the contentions is thus opened. In order, therefore, to afford
a common basis by which to measure the correctness of the various
implications insisted upon, we state under separate headings
doctrines which are applicable to all the contentions, and which
are in reason so well founded and so conclusively sustained by
authority as to be indisputable.
(a) In all the states, from the beginning down to the adoption
of the Articles of Confederation, the citizens thereof possessed
the fundamental right, inherent in citizens of all free
governments, peacefully to dwell within the limits of their
respective states, to move at will from place to place therein, and
to have free ingress thereto and egress therefrom, with a
consequent authority in the states to forbid and punish violations
of this fundamental right.
Corfield v. Coryell, 4 Wash.
C.C. 371, 380, 381;
Slaughterhouse
Cases, 16 Wall. 36.
(b) Whether, in disregard of the principles of comity, any of
the states recognized in their own citizens rights on
Page 254 U. S. 294
this subject which they refused to grant to citizens of other
states we need not consider, in view of the provision of the
Articles of Confederation on the subject. By that provision,
uniformity was secured not by lodging power in Congress to deal
with the subject, but, while reserving in the several states the
authority which they had theretofore enjoyed, yet subjecting such
authority to a limitation inhibiting the power from being used to
discriminate. The text of Article IV which provides for this
subject is as follows:
"The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and
intercourse among the people of the different states in this Union,
the free inhabitants of each of these states, paupers, vagabonds
and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to all
privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several states,
and the people of each state shall have free ingress and egress to
and from any other state. . . ."
Thus, while power remained in the several states, the boundaries
demarking them became, at least for the purpose of the enjoyment of
the right here in question, negligible, and the frontiers of the
Confederation became the measure of the equal right secured to the
inhabitants of each and all the states.
(c) That the Constitution plainly intended to preserve and
enforce the limitation as to discrimination imposed upon the states
by Article IV of the Confederation, and thus necessarily assumed
the continued possession by the states of the reserved power to
deal with free residence, ingress, and egress, cannot be denied for
the following reasons: (1) because the text of Article IV, § 2, of
the Constitution makes manifest that it was drawn with reference to
the corresponding clause of the Articles of Confederation, and was
intended to perpetuate its limitations, and (2) because that view
has been so conclusively settled as to leave no room for
controversy. Thus,
Page 254 U. S. 295
in
Paul v.
Virginia, 8 Wall. 168,
75 U. S. 180,
considering the operation and effect of Article IV, § 2, of the
Constitution, it was said:
"It was undoubtedly the object of the clause in question to
place the citizens of each state upon the same footing with
citizens of other states so far as the advantages resulting from
citizenship in those states are concerned. It relieves them from
the disabilities of alienage in other states, it inhibits
discriminating legislation against them by other states, it gives
them the right of free ingress into other states, and egress from
them, it insures to them in other states the same freedom possessed
by the citizens of those states in the acquisition and enjoyment of
property and in the pursuit of happiness, and it secures them in
other estates the equal protection of their laws. It has been
justly said that no provision in the Constitution has tended so
strongly to constitute the citizens of the United States one people
as this."
"Indeed, without some provision of the kind removing from the
citizens of each state the disabilities of alienage in the other
states, and giving them equality of privilege with citizens of
those states, the republic would have constituted little more than
a league of states; it would not have constituted the Union which
now exists."
Again, in
Ward v.
Maryland, 12 Wall. 418,
79 U. S. 430,
upon the same subject, the Court declared:
"Attempt will not be made to define the words 'privileges and
immunities,' or to specify the rights which they are intended to
secure and protect, beyond what may be necessary to the decision of
the case before the court. Beyond doubt, those words are words of
very comprehensive meaning, but it will be sufficient to say that
the clause plainly and unmistakably secures and protects the right
of a citizen of one state to pass into any other State of the Union
for the purpose of engaging in lawful commerce, trade, or business
without molestation, to acquire personal
Page 254 U. S. 296
property, to take and hold real estate, to maintain actions in
the courts of the state, and to be exempt from any higher taxes or
excises than are imposed by the state upon its own citizens."
In the
Slaughterhouse
Cases, 16 Wall. 36,
83 U. S. 75-76,
the Court, after reciting both the provisions of Article IV of the
Confederation and Article IV, § 2, of the Constitution, said:
"There can be but little question that the purpose of both these
provisions is the same, and that the privileges and immunities
intended are the same in each. In the article of the Confederation,
we have some of these specifically mentioned, and enough perhaps to
give some general idea of the class of civil rights meant by the
phrase."
"Fortunately we are not without judicial construction of this
clause of the Constitution. The first and leading case on the
subject is that of
Corfield v. Coryell, decided by Mr.
Justice Washington in the Circuit Court for the District of
Pennsylvania in 1823."
" The inquiry,"
"he says,"
"is what are the privileges and immunities of citizens of the
several states? We feel no hesitation in confining these
expressions to those privileges and immunities which are
fundamental, which belong of right to the citizens of all free
governments, and which have at all times been enjoyed by citizens
of the several states which compose this Union, from the time of
their becoming free, independent, and sovereign. What these
fundamental principles are it would be more tedious than difficult
to enumerate. They may all, however, be comprehended under the
following general heads: protection by the government, with the
right to acquire and possess property of every kind, and to pursue
and obtain happiness and safety, subject, nevertheless, to such
restraints as the government may prescribe for the general good of
the whole. "
Page 254 U. S. 297
"This definition of the privileges and immunities of citizens of
the states is adopted in the main by this Court in the recent case
of
Ward v. Maryland, while it declines to undertake an
authoritative definition beyond what was necessary to that
decision. The description, when taken to include others not named
but which are of the same general character, embraces nearly every
civil right for the establishment and protection of which organized
government is instituted. They are, in the language of Judge
Washington, those rights which are fundamental. Throughout his
opinion, they are spoken of as rights belonging to the individual
as a citizen of a state. They are so spoken of in the
constitutional provision which he was construing. And they have
always been held to be the class of rights which the state
governments were created to establish and secure."
The controlling influence of the opinion in the
Slaughterhouse Cases, as well as that of Mr. Justice
Washington in
Corfield v. Coryell, stand out in bolder
relief when it is observed that, in the latter case, following the
statement of the general principles contained in the passage quoted
in the
Slaughterhouse Cases, there is found, by way of
illustration, an enumeration of particular rights declared to be
clearly embraced by the general principles, one of which is
described as:
"The right of a citizen of one state to pass through, or reside
in any other state, for purposes of trade, agriculture,
professional pursuits, or otherwise."
Applying these doctrines, let us come to test the soundness of
the implications from the Constitution relied upon to establish the
absence of all state authority to deal with the individual wrongs
complained of, and the possession by the federal government of
power for that purpose, and, as pertinent thereto, to refer briefly
to the authorities which it is assumed sustained those
implications.
Undoubtedly the right of citizens of the states to reside
peacefully in, and to have free ingress into and egress from,
Page 254 U. S. 298
the several states had, prior to the Confederation, a two-fold
aspect: (1) as possessed in their own states, and (2) as enjoyed in
virtue of the comity of other states. But, although the
Constitution fused these distinct rights into one by providing that
one state should not deny to the citizens of other states rights
given to its own citizens, no basis is afforded for contending that
a wrongful prevention by an individual of the enjoyment by a
citizen of one state in another of rights possessed in that state
by its own citizens was a violation of a right afforded by the
Constitution. This is the necessary result of Article IV, § 2,
which reserves to the several states authority over the subject,
limited by the restriction against state discriminatory action,
hence excluding federal authority except where invoked to enforce
the limitation, which is not here the case -- a conclusion
expressly sustained by the ruling in
United States v.
Harris, 106 U. S. 629,
106 U. S. 645,
to the effect that the second section of Article IV, like the
Fourteenth Amendment, is directed alone against state action. And
this was but a summary of what had been previously pointed out in
the
Slaughterhouse
Cases, 16 Wall. 36, where, in dealing with the
privileges and immunities embraced by Article IV, § 2, of the
Constitution, it was observed (p.
83 U. S. 77):
"It would be the vainest show of learning to attempt to prove by
citations of authority that, up to the adoption of the recent
amendments, no claim or pretence was set up that those rights
depended on the federal government for their existence or
protection, beyond the very few express limitations which the
federal Constitution imposed upon the states, such, for instance,
as the prohibition against
ex post facto laws, bills of
attainder, and laws impairing the obligation of contracts. But,
with the exception of these and a few other restrictions, the
entire domain of the privileges and immunities of citizens of the
states, as above defined, lay within the constitutional and
legislative power
Page 254 U. S. 299
of the states, and without that of the federal government."
Nor is the situation changed by assuming that, as a state has
the power, by depriving its own citizens of the right to reside
peacefully therein and to free ingress thereto and egress
therefrom, it may, without violating the prohibitions of Article IV
against discrimination, apply a like rule to citizens of other
states, and hence engender, outside of Article IV, a federal right.
This must be so, since the proposition assumes that a state could,
without violating the fundamental limitations of the Constitution,
other than those of Article IV, § 2, enact legislation incompatible
with its existence as a free government and destructive of the
fundamental rights of its citizens, and, furthermore, because the
premise upon which the proposition rests is state action and the
existence of federal power to determine the repugnancy of such
action to the Constitution -- matters which, not being here
involved, are not disputed.
This leads us, furthermore, to point out that the case of
Crandall v.
Nevada, 6 Wall. 35, so much relied upon in the
argument, is inapplicable not only because it involved the validity
of state action, but because the state statute considered in that
case was held to directly burden the performance by the United
States of its governmental functions, and also to limit rights of
the citizens growing out of such functions, and hence it also
follows that the observation made in
Twining v. New
Jersey, 211 U. S. 78,
211 U. S. 97, to
the effect that it had been held in the
Crandall case that
the privilege of passing from state to state is an attribute of
national citizenship, may here be put out of view as
inapposite.
With the object of confining our decision to the case before us,
we say that nothing we have stated must be considered as implying a
want of power in the United States to restrain acts which, although
involving ingress or
Page 254 U. S. 300
egress into or from a state, have for their direct and necessary
effect an interference with the performance of duties which it is
incumbent upon the United States to discharge, as illustrated in
the
Crandall case,
supra.
Judgment affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE CLARKE dissents.