1. After a cause has been argued and decided, the Court will not
hear a motion to change the decree based on affidavits taken to
show facts which do not appear in the record.
2. This Court will not suffer its judgment upon an appeal to be
influenced in any respect by new testimony offered here, even in a
case which is within its general chancery powers, much less where
it is exercising merely the special jurisdiction conferred by
Congress in respect to California land claims.
3. The necessity for this rule and the legal principles on which
it is founded discussed by THE CHIEF JUSTICE..
4. The Court does not doubt its power to open a judgment
rendered at the present term and continue or rehear the cause if,
upon the record, one of the judges who concurred in the decision
supposes it to be erroneous.
This cause a California land claim brought here on appeal by the
United States from the decree of the district court was reached on
the docket at the present term, was called in its regular order,
and was argued by counsel on both sides; the opinion of the Court
upon it was delivered, and a decree pronounced, that the decree of
the district court be reversed and the cause remanded, with
directions to dismiss the petition of the claimant.
See
ante, <|66 U.S. 227|>227.
At a subsequent day of the term, Mr. Reverdy Johnson for the
claimant, moved the court so far to modify its order entered
therein, as to remand the cause to the court below for
Page 66 U. S. 489
further evidence and proceedings, and offered in support of the
motion sundry affidavits to show by this new testimony that the
Court had fallen into error in some conclusions of fact stated in
the opinion, and also that some of the testimony was not within the
knowledge or power of the appellee when the case was heard in the
district court, but has been discovered since.
MR. CHIEF JUSTICE TANEY.
The Court cannot receive the depositions, nor hear an argument
upon the motion. The point has already been decided at the present
term in the case of
United States v. Hensley, and a
similar motion overruled.
In the case of
Southard v.
Russell, 12 How. 139, the Court held that it could
not look beyond the record as transmitted from the inferior court
nor suffer its judgment to be influenced in any respect by new
testimony offered here. And that case was before us in the exercise
of the general chancery powers conferred by the Constitution, in
which a broad discretionary power may be exercised in order to
promote the purposes of justice; for in a case prosecuted within
that jurisdiction the defeated party, upon the discovery of new
evidence, may, after a final decree in this Court, obtain leave
here to file a bill of review in the court below to review the
judgment which this Court had rendered.
57 U. S. 16
How. 547.
But the jurisdiction which the Court exercises in this case is a
special one, created by act of Congress, and its mode of proceeding
and powers are regulated and defined by the law, and it cannot,
under any supposed analogy to proceedings in chancery, exercise any
power beyond that which the act or acts of
Page 66 U. S. 490
Congress have given.
31 U. S. 6 Pet.
470,
United States v. Nourse. These acts of Congress give
this Court the power to hear and determine the case upon the
proceedings and evidence taken in the court below certified to this
Court, but no power to receive or consider any new evidence,
although discovered since the decree was passed. Indeed it would
have been inconsistent with the policy upon which these acts of
Congress were passed to confer this power upon the court. This
special jurisdiction was created in order to ascertain promptly the
extent of the grants which had been made by the Mexican government
to private individuals, and how much of the public domain still
remained in the hands of the government at the time of the cession
to the United States, and had become subject to the disposition of
this government. And if a proceeding like the one now proposed was
sanctioned, it would lead to interminable delays in almost every
case where the decision was against the claimant, and it would be
difficult to say when the rights of the United States could be
regarded as finally settled in any case while a Mexican still made
claim to the land under what he might allege to be a Mexican grant.
And we may judge from the character of the testimony offered in the
cases which have already been before the Court upon these Mexican
claims what would be the extent of the fraud and perjury to which
such a privilege would lead when the claimant had learned from the
decision of the Court what were the weak points of his case, and
was strongly tempted by the magnitude of his claim to seek for and
discover some new testimony to cure its defects.
We do not doubt the power of the Court to open the judgment it
has rendered at the present term and continue or rehear the case
if, upon the record before us, anyone of the judges who concurred
in the decision had since seen cause to doubt its correctness. But
in the absence of any such doubt, the motion of the appellee is
overruled.
Motion refused.