2. The impairment of contract obligation forbidden by Art. I, §
10, of the Constitution is impairment by legislation. The
proposition that judicial impairment is included has been so
frequently denied that it cannot support a writ of error to a state
supreme court.
Id. Tidal Oil Co. v. Flanagan, 263 U.
S. 444.
Page 264 U. S. 30
3. A state statute in force when a contract was made cannot be
made a subsequent statute within the meaning of Art. I, § 10, of
the Constitution through new interpretation by the state courts. P.
264 U. S.
31.
Writ of error to renew 194 Iowa 71 dismissed.
Error to a judgment of the Supreme Court of Iowa which affirmed
a judgment for the plaintiff in her suit to recover her statutory
share, as widow, of property left by her deceased husband, and
claimed by the defendants as his surviving partners.
MR. CHIEF JUSTICE TAFT delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is a writ of error to the Supreme Court of Iowa. The suit
was begun in Polk County District Court by Anna B. Fleming, widow
of Charles Fleming, against three brothers of her husband, one of
whom had become his administrator, to secure her dower rights under
the state statute in the share of her husband in the property of a
partnership of the four brothers in the business of soliciting and
placing life insurance. The defendants' claim was that Charles lost
all interest in the partnership upon his death, that, by virtue of
three contracts, the property passed to the survivors, and the
partnership of the three continued in possession and title free
from any claim by heirs, next of kin, or the widow of Charles. The
Supreme Court of Iowa held that these contracts constituted a
contract by each partner to make a will to his survivors, were
testamentary in character, and were avoided by § 3376 of the Code
of Iowa, providing that, as between husband and wife, the
survivor's share cannot be affected by any will of the spouse
without previous consent of the survivor.
Page 264 U. S. 31
It is assigned for error that, in this ruling, the supreme court
of the state reversed its former rulings, under which such a
contract of partnership had been held to be valid, and not avoided
by § 3376 or any other section of the Code, that, on the faith of
these rulings, the partnership contracts herein had been entered
into, and that the new construction of the statute was an
impairment of the contracts of partnership in violation of Article
1, § 10, of the federal Constitution. This objection was made in
the supreme court of the state on the application for a second
rehearing, and the court held in its opinion that the point was not
well taken, because no prior decisions had in fact been overruled.
This is a sufficient consideration of the point by the state
supreme court before its judgment to justify an assignment of error
raising the federal question if in fact and in law it be one.
In
Tidal Oil Co. v. Flanagan, 263 U.
S. 444, we had occasion to consider the same issue.
After a somewhat full examination, we held that, by a score of
decisions of this Court, a judicial impairment of a contract
obligation was not within § 10, Art. I, of the Constitution, since
the inhibition was directed only against impairment by legislation,
and that such judicial action presented no federal question of
which this Court could take jurisdiction on a writ of error from a
state court.
It is urged upon us that the impairment here is legislative, in
that the case turned on the effect of § 3376 of the Iowa Code; that
the subsequent judicial construction of it became part of the
statute and gave it a new effect as a law. In other words, the
contention is that the same statute was one law when first
construed before the making of the contract, and has become a new
and different act of the legislature by the later decision of the
court. This is ingenious, but unsound. It is the same law. The
effect of the subsequent decisions is not to make a new law, but
only to hold that the law always meant what the court
Page 264 U. S. 32
now says it means. The court has power to construe a legislative
act, but it has no power by change in construction to date its
passage as a law from the time of the later decision. A statute in
force when a contract was made cannot be made a subsequent statute
through new interpretation by the courts. Any different view would
be at variance with the many decisions of this Court cited in the
Flanagan case.
For these reasons, we must hold that the claim of plaintiffs in
error does not raise a substantial federal question, and dismiss
the writ of error for lack of jurisdiction.