A state has power to make reasonable provisions for determining
the qualifications of those engaged in the practice of medicine and
for punishing those who attempt to engage therein in defiance of
such statutory provisions.
Act No. 237 of Michigan of 1889 creating a board of registration
in medicine is not in conflict with the provisions of the
Fourteenth Amendment.
There is no provision in the federal Constitution forbidding the
state from granting to a tribunal, whether called a court or a
board of registration, the final determination of a legal question.
Due process of law is not necessarily judicial process, nor is the
right of appeal essential to due process of law.
When a statute fixes the time and place of meeting of any board
or tribunal, no special notice to parties interested is required to
constitute due process of law, as the statute itself is sufficient
notice.
A state statute requiring the registration of physicians and
prohibiting those who are not so registered from practicing
thereafter is not an
ex post facto law as to a physician
who had once engaged in practice, but who was held not to be
qualified and whose registration was refused by the board of
registration appointed under the statute, such statute not
providing any punishment for his having practiced prior to the
enactment thereof.
Act No. 237 of the public acts of the State of Michigan (1899)
directed the appointment of "a board of registration in medicine,"
to hold two regular meetings at specified times in each year at the
state capitol, and additional meetings at such times and places as
it might determine; required all persons engaging in the practice
of medicine and surgery to obtain from such board a certificate of
registration; prescribed the conditions
Page 188 U. S. 506
upon which such certificate should be granted, and forbade,
under penalty, the practice of medicine or surgery without such
certificate. The conditions above referred to were either a
satisfactory examination, or the possession of
"a diploma from any legally incorporated, regularly established,
and reputable college of medicine, . . . having at least a three
years' course of eight months in each year, or a course of four
years of six months in each year, . . . as shall be approved and
designated by the board of registration,"
with a proviso that
"the board of registration shall not register any person by
reason of a diploma from any college which sells, or advertises to
sell, diplomas 'without attendance,' nor from any other than a
regularly established and reputable college."
Another provision was that an applicant should be given a
certificate of registration if he should
"present sufficient proof within six months after the passage of
this act of his having already been legally registered under act
No. 167 of 1883, as amended in 1887, entitled 'An Act to Promote
Public Health.'"
The plaintiff in error was prosecuted and convicted in the
circuit court for the County of Muskegon of a violation of this
statute, which conviction was affirmed by the supreme court of the
state, 127 Mich. 87, to reverse which ruling this writ of error was
sued out.
MR. JUSTICE BREWER delivered the opinion of the Court.
The power of a state to make reasonable provisions for
determining the qualifications of those engaging in the practice of
medicine and punishing those who attempt to engage therein in
defiance of such statutory provisions, is not open to question.
Dent v. West Virginia, 129 U. S. 114;
Hawker v. New York, 170 U. S. 189, and
cases cited in the opinion;
State ex Rel. Burroughs v.
Webster, 150 Ind. 607, and cases cited.
Page 188 U. S. 507
It is objected in the present case that the board of
registration is given authority to exercise judicial powers without
any appeal from its decision, inasmuch as it may refuse a
certificate of registration if it shall find that no sufficient
proof is presented that the applicant had been "legally registered
under act No. 167 of 1883." That, it is contended, is the
determination of a legal question which no tribunal other than a
regularly organized court can be empowered to decide. The decision
of the state supreme court is conclusive that the act does not
conflict with the state constitution, and we know of no provision
in the federal Constitution which forbids a state from granting to
a tribunal, whether called a court or a board of registration, the
final determination of a legal question. Indeed, it not
infrequently happens that a full discharge of their duties compels
boards, or officers of a purely ministerial character, to consider
and determine questions of a legal nature. Due process is not
necessarily judicial process.
Murray's Lessee v. Hoboken
Land & Improvement Company, 18 How. 272;
Davidson v. New Orleans, 96 U. S. 97;
Ex
Parte Wall, 107 U. S. 265,
107 U. S. 289;
Dreyer v. Illinois, 187 U. S. 71,
187 U. S. 83;
People v. Hasbrouck, 11 Utah, 291. In the last case, this
very question was presented, and in the opinion, on page 305, it
was said:
"The objection that the statute attempts to confer judicial
power on the board is not well founded. Many executive officers,
even those who are spoken of as purely ministerial officers, act
judicially in the determination of facts in the performance of
their official duties, and in so doing they do not exercise
'judicial power,' as that phrase is commonly used, and as it is
used in the organic act in conferring judicial power upon specified
courts. The powers conferred on the board of medical examiners are
nowise different in character in this respect from those exercised
by the examiners of candidates to teach in our public schools, or
by tax assessors or boards of equalization in determining, for
purposes of taxation, the value of property. The ascertainment and
determination of qualifications to practice medicine by a board of
competent experts, appointed for that purpose, is not the exercise
of a power which appropriately belongs to the judicial department
of the government. "
Page 188 U. S. 508
In
Hurtado v. California, 110 U.
S. 516, Mr. Justice Matthews, speaking for the Court,
discussed at some length and with citation of many authorities the
essential elements of due process of law, and summed up the
conclusions in these words (p.
110 U. S.
537):
"It follows that any legal proceeding enforced by public
authority, whether sanctioned by age and custom, or newly devised
in the discretion of the legislative power, in furtherance of the
general public good, which regards and preserves these principles
of liberty and justice, must be held to be due process of law."
Neither is the right of appeal essential to due process of law.
In nearly every state are statutes giving, in criminal cases of a
minor nature, a single trial, without any right of review. For
nearly a century. trials under the federal practice for even the
gravest offenses ended in the trial court, except in cases where
two judges were present and certified a question of law to this
Court. In civil cases, a common rule is that the amount in
controversy limits the entire litigation to one court, yet there
was never any serious question that in these cases due process of
law was granted.
In
Pittsburgh &c. Railway Company v. Backus,
154 U. S. 421,
upon the question whether the right of appeal was essential to the
validity of a taxing statute, we said (p.
154 U. S.
427):
"Equally fallacious is the contention that, because to the
ordinary taxpayer there is allowed not merely one hearing before
the county officials, but also a right of appeal with a second
hearing before the state board, while only the one hearing before
the latter board is given to railroad companies in respect to their
property, therefore the latter are denied the equal protection of
the laws. If a single hearing is not due process, doubling it will
not make it so."
In
McKane v. Durston, 153 U. S. 684,
153 U. S. 687,
this Court declared that
"a review by an appellate court of the final judgment in a
criminal case, however grave the offense of which the accused is
convicted, was not at common law, and is not now a necessary
element of due process of law."
See also Andrews v. Sugartz, 156 U.
S. 272.
But while the statute makes in terms no provision for a
review
Page 188 U. S. 509
of the proceedings of the board, yet it is not true that such
proceedings are beyond investigation in the courts. In
Metcalfe
v. State Board of Registration, 123 Mich. 661, an application
for mandamus to compel this board to register the petitioner was
entertained, and although the application was denied, yet the
denial was based not upon a want of jurisdiction in the court, but
upon the merits.
It is further insisted that it is essential to a judicial or
quasi-judicial proceeding that it should give a person
accused or interested the benefit of a hearing, and that there is
in this statute no special provision for notice, or hearing, or
authority to summon witnesses or to compel them to testify. The
statute provides for semiannual meetings at specified times at the
state capitol, but the plaintiff in error did not appear at any of
these meetings or there present an application for registration or
showing of his right thereto; he simply sent to the secretary of
the board a certified copy of his registration under the prior
statute, and his diploma from the Independent Medical College of
Chicago, Illinois. The latter was returned with a notice from the
board that it had denied the application for registration. When a
statute fixes the time and place of meeting of any board or
tribunal, no special notice to parties interested is required. The
statute is itself sufficient notice. If plaintiff in error had
applied at any meeting for a hearing, the board would have been
compelled to grant it, and if on such hearing his offer of or
demand for testimony had been refused, the question might have been
fairly presented to the state courts to what extent the action of
the board had deprived him of his rights.
He seems to assume that the proceedings before the board were in
themselves of a criminal nature, and that the state by such
proceedings was endeavoring to convict him of an offense in the
practice of his profession. But this is a mistake. The state was
simply seeking to ascertain who ought to be permitted to practice
medicine or surgery, and criminality arises only when one assumes
to practice without having his right so to do established by the
action of the board. The proceedings of the board to determine his
qualifications are no more criminal than examinations of applicants
to teach or practice law, and if the
Page 188 U. S. 510
provisions for testing such qualifications are reasonable in
their nature, a party must comply with them, and has no right to
practice his profession is defiance thereof.
It is further insisted that, having once engaged in the
practice, and having been licensed so to do, he had a right to
continue in such practice, and that this statute was in the nature
of an
ex post facto law. The case of
Hawker v. New
York, 170 U. S. 189, is
decisive upon this question. The statute does not attempt to punish
him for any past offense, and in the most extreme view can only be
considered as requiring continuing evidence of his qualifications
as a physician or surgeon. As shown in
Dent v. West Virginia,
supra, there is no similarity between statutes like this and
the proceedings which were adjudged void in
Cummings
v. Missouri, 4 Wall. 277, and
Ex Parte
Garland, 4 Wall. 333.
We fail to see anything in the statute which brings it within
the inhibitions of the federal Constitution, and therefore the
judgment of the Supreme Court of Michigan is
Affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE HARLAN concurs in the result.
