Incorporation
Two Track Incorporation
Hurtado v. California (1884)
110 U.S. 516 (1884)
Vote: 7-1
Opinion: J. Matthews
Decision: Affirmed
Majority: J. Matthews, joined by J. Waite, J. Miller, J. Bradley, J. Woods, J. Gray, J. Blatchford
Dissent: J. Harlan
MR. Justice Matthews delivered the opinion of the court.
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It is claimed on behalf of the prisoner that the conviction and sentence are void, on the ground that they are repugnant to that clause of the Fourteenth Article of Amendment of the Constitution of the United States which is in these words: ‘Nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.’
The proposition of law we are asked to affirm is that an indictment or presentment by a grand jury, as known to the common law of England, is essential to that “due process of law,” when applied to prosecutions for felonies, which is secured and guaranteed by this provision of the Constitution of the United States, and which accordingly it is forbidden to the States respectively to dispense with in the administration of criminal law.
The question is one of grave and serious import, affecting both private and public rights and interests of great magnitude, and involves a consideration of what additional restrictions upon the legislative policy of the States has been imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States …
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On the other hand, it is maintained on behalf of the plaintiff in error that the phrase “due process of law” is equivalent to “law of the land,” as found in the 29th chapter of Magna Charta; that, by immemorial usage, it has acquired a fixed, definite, and technical meaning; that it refers to and includes not only the general principles of public liberty and private right which lie at the foundation of all free government, but the very institutions which, venerable by time and custom, have been tried by experience and found fit and necessary for the preservation of those principles, and which, having been the birthright and inheritance of every English subject, crossed the Atlantic with the colonists and were transplanted and established in the fundamental laws of the State; that, having been originally introduced into the Constitution of the United States as a limitation upon the powers of the government, brought into being by that instrument, it has now been added as an additional security to the individual against oppression by the States themselves; that one of these institutions is that of the grand jury, an indictment or presentment by which against the accused in cases of alleged felonies is an essential part of due process of law in order that he may not be harassed or destroyed by prosecutions founded only upon private malice or popular fury.
… it may be said that Lord Coke himself explains his own meaning by saying ‘the law of the land,’ as expressed in Magna Charta, was intended due process of law, that is, by indictment or presentment of good and lawful men.
It is quite apparent from these extracts that the interpretation usually put upon Lord Coke’s statement is too large, because if an indictment or presentment by a grand jury is essential to due process of law in all cases of imprisonment for crime, it applies not only to felonies but to misdemeanors and petty offences, and the conclusion would be inevitable that information as a substitute for indictments would be illegal in all cases …
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When we add to this that the primitive grand jury heard no witnesses in support of the truth of the charges to be preferred, but presented upon their own knowledge, or indicted upon common fame and general suspicion, we shall be ready to acknowledge that it is better not to go too far back into antiquity for the best securities for our “ancient liberties.” It is more consonant to the true philosophy of our historical legal institutions to say that the spirit of personal liberty and individual right, which they embodied, was preserved and developed by a progressive growth and wise adaptation to new circumstances and situations of the forms and processes found fit to give, from time to time, new expression and greater effect to modern ideas of self-government …
The Constitution of the United States was ordained, it is true, by descendants of Englishmen, who inherited the traditions of English law and history; but it was made for an undefined and expanding future, and for a people gathered and to be gathered from many nations and of many tongues. And while we take just pride in the principles and institutions of the common law, we are not to forget that in lands where other systems of jurisprudence prevail, the ideas and processes of civil justice are also not unknown. Due process of law, in spite of the absolutism of continental governments, is not alien to that code which survived the Roman Empire as the foundation of modern civilization in Europe, and which has given us that fundamental maxim of distributive justice-suum cuique tribuere. There is nothing in Magna Charta, rightly construed a broad charter of public right and law, which ought to exclude the best ideas of all systems and of every age; and as it was the characteristic principle of the common law to draw its inspiration from every fountain of justice, we are not to assume that the sources of its supply have been exhausted. On the contrary, we should expect that the new and various experiences of our own situation and system will mould and shape it into new and not less useful forms …
In this country written constitutions were deemed essential to protect the rights and liberties of the people against the encroachments of power delegated to their governments, and the provisions of Magna Charta were incorporated into Bills of Rights. They were limitations upon all the powers of government, legislative as well as executive and judicial …
Tried by these principles, we are unable to say that the substitution for a presentment or indictment by a grand jury of the proceeding by information, after examination and commitment by a magistrate, certifying to the probable guilt of the defendant, with the right on his part to the aid of counsel, and to the cross-examination of the witnesses produced for the prosecution, is not due process of law. It is, as we have seen, an ancient proceeding at common law, which might include every case of an offence of less grade than a felony, except misprision of treason; and in every circumstance of its administration, as authorized by the statute of California, it carefully considers and guards the substantial interest of the prisoner. It is merely a preliminary proceeding, and can result in no final judgment, except as the consequence of a regular judicial trial, conducted precisely as in cases of indictment …
For these reasons, finding no error therein, the judgment of the Supreme Court of California is
Affirmed.
Maxwell v. Dow (1900)
176 U.S. 581 (1900)
Vote: 8-1
Opinion: J. Peckham
Decision: Affirmed
Majority: Peckham, joined by Fuller, Gray, Brewer, Brown, Shiras, White, McKenna
Dissent: J. Harlan
MR. JUSTICE PECKHAM delivered the opinion of the court.
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On the 27th of June, 1898, an information was filed against the plaintiff in error by the prosecuting attorney of the county, in a state court of the State of Utah, charging him with the crime of robbery committed within the county in May, 1898. In September, 1898, he was tried before a jury composed of but eight jurors, and convicted and sentenced to imprisonment in the state prison for eighteen years, and since that time has been confined in prison, undergoing the sentence of the state court.
In May, 1899, he applied to the Supreme Court of the State for a writ of habeas corpus, and alleged in his sworn petition that he was a natural-born citizen of the United States, and that his imprisonment was unlawful, because he was prosecuted under an information instead of by indictment by a grand jury, and was tried by a jury composed of eight instead of twelve jurors. He specially set up and claimed (1) that to prosecute him by information abridged his privileges and immunities as a citizen of the United States, under article 5 of the amendments to the Constitution of the United States, and also violated section 1 of article 14 of those amendments; (2) that a trial by jury of only eight persons abridged his privileges and immunities as a citizen of the United States, under article 6, and also violated section 1 of article 14 of such amendments; (3) that a trial by such a jury and his subsequent imprisonment by reason of the verdict of that jury deprived him of his liberty without due process of law, -in violation of section 1 of article 14, which provides that no State shall deprive any person of life, liberty or, property, without due process of law …
The questions to be determined in this court are, (1) as to the validity, with reference to the Federal Constitution, of the proceeding against the plaintiff in error on an information instead of by an indictment by a grand jury; and (2) the validity of the trial of the plaintiff in error by a jury composed of eight instead of twelve jurors …
In a Federal court no person can be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime unless by indictment by a grand jury, with the exceptions stated in the Fifth Amendment. Yet this amendment was held in the Hurtado case not to apply to a prosecution for murder in a state court pursuant to a state law. The claim was made in the case (and referred to in the opinion) that the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment provided an additional security to the individual against oppression by the States themselves, and limited their powers to the same extent as the amendments theretofore adopted had limited the powers of the Federal Government. By holding that the conviction ‘upon an information was valid, the court necessarily held that an indictment was not necessary … To the other objection, that a conviction upon an information deprives a person of his liberty without due process of law, the Hurtado case is, as we have said, a complete and conclusive answer.
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It would seem to be quite plain that the provision in the Utah constitution for a jury of eight jurors in all state criminal trials, for other than capital offences, violates the Sixth Amendment, provided that amendment is now to be construed as applicable to criminal prosecutions of citizens of the- United States in state courts …
It is conceded that there are certain privileges or immunities possessed by a citizen of the United States, because of his citizenship, and that they cannot be abridged by any action of the States. In order to limit the powers which it was feared might be claimed or exercised by the Federal Government, under the’ provisions of the Constitution as it was when adopted, the first ten amendments to that instrument were proposed to the legislatures of the several States by the first Congress on the 25th of September, 1789. They were intended as restraints and limitations upon the powers of the General Government, and were not intended to and did not have any effect upon the powers of the respective States. This has been many times decided. The cases herewith cited are to that effect, and they cite many others which decide the same matter. Spies v. Illinois (1887) [other citations omitted].
It is claimed, however, that since the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment the effect of the former amendments has been thereby changed and greatly enlarged. It is now urged in substance that all the provisions contained in the first ten amendments, so far as they secure and recognize the fundamental rights of the individual as against the exercise of Federal power, are by virtue of this amendment to be regarded as privileges or immunities of a citizen of the United States, and, therefore, the States cannot provide for any procedure in state courts which could not be followed in a Federal court because of the limitations contained in those amendments …
That the primary reason for that amendment was to secure the full enjoyment of liberty to the colored race is not denied, yet it is not restricted to that purpose, and it applies to every one, white or black, that comes within its provisions. But, as said in the Slaughter-house Cases, the protection of the citizen in his rights as a citizen of the State still remains with the State … But if all these rights are included in the phrase “privileges and immunities”‘ of citizens of the United States, which the States by reason of the Fourteenth Amendment cannot in any manner abridge, then the sovereignty of the State in regard to them has been entirely destroyed, and the Slaughter-house Cases, and United States v. Cruikshank are all wrong, and should be overruled …
In the case of a constitutional amendment it is of less materiality than in that of an ordinary bill or resolution. A constitutional amendment must be agreed to, not only by Senators and Representatives, but it must be ratified by the legislatures, or by conventions, in three fourths of the States before such amendment can take effect. The safe way is to read its language in connection with the known condition of affairs out of which the occasion for its adoption may have arisen, and then to construe it, if there be therein any doubtful expressions, in a way so far as is reasonably possible, to forward the known purpose or object for which the amendment was adopted. This rule could not, of course, be so used as to limit the force and effect of an amendment in a manner which the plain and unambiguous language used therein would not justify or permit.
For the reasons stated, we come to the conclusion that the clause under consideration does not affect the validity of the Utah constitution and legislation.
The remaining question is, whether in denying the right of an individual, in all criminal cases not capital, to have a jury composed of twelve jurors, the State deprives him of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.
This question is, as we believe, substantially answered by the reasoning of the opinion in the Hurtado case, supra. The distinct question was there presented whether it was due process of law to prosecute a person charged with murder by an information under the state constitution and law. It was held that it was, and that the Fourteenth Amendment did not prohibit such a procedure. In our opinion the right to be exempt from prosecution for an infamous crime, except upon a presentment by a grand jury, is of the same nature as the right to a petit jury of the number fixed by the common law. If the State have the power to abolish the grand jury and the consequent proceeding by indictment, the same course of reasoning which establishes that right will and does establish the right to alter the number of the petit jury from that provided by the common law. Hodgson v. Vermont (1897) [other citations omitted].
Trial by jury has never been affirmed to be a necessary requisite of due process of law. In pot one of the cases cited and commented upon in the Hurtado case is a trial by jury mentioned as a necessary part of such process …
Judged by the various cases in this court we think there is no error in this record, and the judgment of the Supreme Court of Utah must, therefore, be Affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, dissenting.
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What are the privileges and immunities of “citizens of the United States”? Without attempting to enumerate them, it ought to be deemed safe to say that such privileges and immunities embrace at least those expressly recognized by the Constitution of the United States and placed beyond the power of Congress to take away or impair …
It seems to me that the privileges and immunities enumerated in these amendments belong to every citizen of the United States. They were universally so regarded prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. In order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity, the political community known as the People of the United States ordained and established the Constitution of the United States; and every member of that political community was a citizen of the United States. It was that community that adopted, in the mode prescribed by the Constitution, the first ten amendments; and what they had in view by so doing was to make it certain that the privileges and immunities therein specified -the enjoyment of which, the fathers believed, were necessary in order to secure the blessings of liberty could never be impaired or destroyed by the National Government …
I am also of opinion that the trial of the accused for the crime charged against him by a jury of eight persons was not consistent with the “due process of law” prescribed by the Fourteenth Amendment. Referring to the words in the Fifth Amendment, that “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law,” this court said in Murray’s Lessee v. Hoboken: “The Constitution contains no description of those processes which it was intended to allow or forbid. It does not even declare what principles are to be applied to ascertain whether it be due process. It was manifest that it was not left to the legislative power to enact any process which might be devised. The article is a restraint on the legislative as well as on the executive and judicial powers of the Government, and cannot be so construed as to leave Congress free to make any process ‘due process of law’ by its mere will. To what principles are we to resort to ascertain whether this process enacted by Congress is due process? To this the answer must be twofold. We must examine the Constitution itself to see whether this process be in conflict with any of its provisions. If not found to be so, we must look to those settled usages and modes of proceeding existing in the common and statute law of England before the emigration of our ancestors, and which are shown not to have been unsuited to their civil and political condition by having been acted on by them after the settlement ‘of this country.” …
The right to be tried when charged with crime by a jury of twelve person is placed by the Constitution upon the same basis as the other rights specified in the first ten amendments. And while those amendments originally limited only the powers of the National Government in respect of the privileges and immunities specified therein, since the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment those privileges and immunities are, in my opinion, also guarded against infringement by the States …
If some of the guarantees of life, liberty and property which at the time of the adoption of the National Constitution were regarded as fundamental and as absolutely essential to the enjoyment of freedom, have in the judgment of some ceased to be of practical value, it is for the people of the United States so to declare by an amendment of that instrument. But, if I do not wholly misapprehend the scope and legal effect of the present decision, the Constitution of the United States does not stand in the way of any State striking down guarantees of life and liberty that English speaking people have for centuries regarded as vital to personal security, and which the men of the Revolutionary period universally claimed as the birthright of freemen.
I dissent from the opinion and judgment of the court.
Gitlow v. NY (1925)
268 U.S. 652 (1925)
Vote: 7-2
Opinion: J. Sanford
Decision: Affirmed
Majority: J. Sanford, joined by J. Taft, J. Van Devanter, J. McReynolds, J. Sutherland, J. Butler, J. Stone
Dissent: J. Holmes, joined by J. Brandeis
MR. JUSTICE SANFORD delivered the opinion of the Court.
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Benjamin Gitlow was indicted in the Supreme Court of New York, with three others, for the statutory crime of criminal anarchy. New York Penal Laws, §§ 160, 161. He was separately tried, convicted, and sentenced to imprisonment. The judgment was affirmed by the Appellate Division and by the Court of Appeals. 195 App. Div. 773; 234 N. Y. 132 and 539. The case is here on writ of error to the Supreme Court, to which the record was remitted …
The contention here is that the statute, by its terms and as applied in this case, is repugnant to the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Its material provisions are:
“§ 160. Criminal anarchy defined. Criminal anarchy is the doctrine that organized government should be overthrown by force or violence, or by assassination of the executive head or of any of the executive officials of government, or by any unlawful means. The advocacy of such doctrine either by word of mouth or writing is a felony …
The defendant is a member of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party, a dissenting branch or faction of that party formed in opposition to its dominant policy of” moderate Socialism.” Membership in both is open to aliens as well as citizens. The Left Wing Section was organized nationally at a conference in New York City in June, 1919, attended by ninety delegates from twenty different States. The conference elected a National Council, of which the defendant was a member, and left to it the adoption of a “Manifesto.” This was published in The Revolutionary Age, the official organ of the Left Wing. The defendant was on the board of managers of the paper and was its business manager. He arranged for the printing of the paper and took to the printer the manuscript of the first issue which contained the Left Wing Manifesto, and also a Communist Program and a Program of the Left Wing that had been adopted by the conference. Sixteen-thousand copies were printed, which were delivered at the premises in New York City used as the office of the Revolutionary Age and the headquarters of the Left Wing, and occupied by the defendant and other officials. These copies were paid for by the. defendant, as business manager of the paper. Employees at this office wrapped and mailed out copies of the paper under the defendant’s direction; and copies were sold from this office. It was admitted that the defendant signed a card subscribing to the Manifesto and Program of the Left Wing, which all applicants were required to sign before being admitted to membership; that he went to different parts of the State to speak to branches of the Socialist Party about the principles of the Left Wing and advocated their adoption; and that he was responsible for the Manifesto as it appeared, that “he knew of the publication, in a general way and he knew of its publication afterwards, and is responsible for its circulation.” …
The precise question presented, and the only question which we can consider under this writ of error, then is, whether the statute, as construed and applied in this case by the state courts, deprived the defendant of his liberty of expression in violation of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment …
The statute does not penalize the utterance or publication of abstract “doctrine” or academic discussion having no quality of incitement to any concrete action. It is not aimed against mere historical or philosophical essays. It does not restrain the advocacy of changes in the form of government by constitutional and lawful means. What it prohibits is language advocating, advising or teaching the overthrow of organized government by unlawful means. These words imply urging to action …
The Manifesto, plainly, is neither the statement of abstract doctrine nor, as suggested by counsel, mere prediction that industrial disturbances and revolutionary mass strikes will result spontaneously in an inevitable process of evolution in the economic system. It advocates and urges in fervent language mass action which shall progressively foment industrial disturbances and through political mass strikes and revolutionary mass action overthrow and destroy organized parliamentary government. It concludes with a call to action in these words: “The proletariat revolution and the Communist reconstruction of society-the struggle for these-is now indispensable …
For present purposes we may and do assume that freedom of speech and of the press-which are protected by the First Amendment from abridgment by Congress are among the fundamental personal rights and “liberties” protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from impairment by the States …
It is a fundamental principle, long established, that the freedom of speech and of the press which is secured by the Constitution, does not confer an absolute right to speak or publish, without responsibility, whatever one may choose, or an unrestricted and unbridled license that gives immunity for every possible use of language and prevents the punishment of those who abuse this freedom …
That a State in the exercise of its police power may punish those who abuse this freedom by utterances inimical to the public welfare, tending to corrupt public morals, incite to crime, or disturb the public peace, is not open to question …
And, for yet more imperative reasons, a State may punish utterances endangering the foundations of organized government and threatening its overthrow by unlawful means. These imperil its own existence as a constitutional State. Freedom of speech and press, said Story (supra) does not protect disturbances to the public peace or the attempt to subvert the government. It does not protect publications or teachings which tend to subvert or imperil the government or to impede or hinder it in the performance of its governmental duties …
It does not protect publications prompting the overthrow of government by force; the punishment of those who publish articles which tend to destroy organized society being essential to the security of freedom and the stability of the State …
That utterances inciting to the overthrow of organized government by unlawful means, present a sufficient danger of substantive evil to bring their punishment within the range of legislative discretion, is clear. Such utterances, by their very nature, involve danger to the public peace and to the security of the State. They threaten breaches of the peace and ultimate revolution. And the immediate danger is none the less real and substantial, because the effect of a given utterance cannot be accurately foreseen. The State cannot reasonably be required to measure the danger from every such utterance in the nice balance of a jeweler’s scale. A single revolutionary spark may kindle a fire that, smouldering for a time, may burst into a sweeping and destructive conflagration. It cannot be said that the State is acting arbitrarily or unreasonably when in the exercise of its judgment as to the measures necessary to protect the public peace and safety, it seeks to extinguish the spark without waiting until it has enkindled the flame or blazed into the conflagration. It cannot reasonably be required to defer the adoption of measures for its own peace and safety until the revolutionary utterances lead to actual disturbances of the public peace or imminent and immediate danger of its own destruction; but it may, in the exercise of its judgment, suppress the threatened danger in its incipiency …
We cannot hold that the present statute is an arbitrary or unreasonable exercise of the police power of the State unwarrantably infringing the freedom of speech or press; and we must and do sustain its constitutionality.
This being so it may be applied to every utterance not too trivial to be beneath the notice of the law-which is of such a character and used with such intent and purpose as to bring it within the prohibition of the statute … In other words, when the legislative body has determined generally, in the constitutional exercise of its discretion, that utterances of a certain kind involve such danger of substantive evil that they may be punished, the question whether any specific utterance coming within the prohibited class is likely, in and of itself, to bring about the substantive evil, is not open to consideration. It is sufficient that the statute itself be constitutional and that the use of the language comes within its prohibition …
We need not enter upon a consideration of the English common law rule of seditious libel or the Federal Sedition Act of 1798, to which reference is made in the defendant’s brief. These are so unlike the present statute, that we think the decisions under them cast no helpful light upon the questions here.
And finding, for the reasons stated, that the statute is not in itself unconstitutional, and that it has not been applied in the present case in derogation of any constitutional right, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Affirmed.
Palko v. Connecticut (1947)
302 U.S. 319 (1947)
Vote: 7-1
Opinion: J. Cardozo
Decision: Affirmed
Majority: J. Cardozo, joined by J. McReynolds, J. Brandeis, J. Sutherland, J. Stone, J. Roberts, J. Black
Dissent: J. Butler
MR. JUSTICE CARDOZO delivered the opinion of the Court.
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Appellant was indicted in Fairfield County, Connecticut, for the crime of murder in the first degree. A jury found him guilty of murder in the second degree, and he was sentenced to confinement in the state prison for life. Thereafter the State of Connecticut, with the permission of the judge presiding at the trial, gave notice of a plea to the Supreme Court of Errors …
Upon such appeal, the Supreme Court of Errors reversed the judgment and ordered a new trial. State v. Palko, 121 Conn. 669; 186 Atl. 657. It found that there had been error of law to the prejudice of the state (1) in excluding testimony as to a confession by defendant; (2) in excluding testimony upon cross-examination of defendant to impeach his credibility, and (3) in the instructions to the jury as to the difference between first and second degree murder …
Pursuant to the mandate of the Supreme Court of Errors, defendant was brought to trial again. Before a jury was impaneled and also at later stages of the case he made the objection that the effect of the new trial was to place him twice in jeopardy for the same offense, and in so doing to violate the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States …
The argument for appellant is that whatever is forbidden by the Fifth Amendment is forbidden by the Fourteenth also. The Fifth Amendment, which is not directed to the states, but Solely to the federal government, creates immunity from double jeopardy. No person shall be “subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.” The Fourteenth Amendment ordains, “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” To retry a defendant, though under one indictment and only one, subjects him, it is said, to double jeopardy in violation of the Fifth Amendment, if the prosecution is one on behalf of the United States. From this the consequence is said to follow that there is a denial of life or liberty without due process of law, if the prosecution is one on behalf of the People of a State …
We have said that, in appellant’s view, the Fourteenth Amendment is to be taken as embodying the prohibitions of the Fifth. His thesis is even broader. Whatever would be a violation of the original bill of rights (Amendments I to VIII) if done by the federal government is now equally unlawful by force of the Fourteenth Amendment if done by a state. There is no such general rule.
The Fifth Amendment provides, among other things, that no person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime unless on presentment or indictment of a grand jury. This court has held that, in prosecutions by a state, presentment or indictment by a grand jury may give way to informations at the instance of a public officer … On the other hand, the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment may make it unlawful for a state to abridge by its statutes the freedom of speech which the First Amendment safeguards against encroachment by the Congress, De Jonge v. Oregon (1937) [other citations omitted], or the like freedom of the press, Grosjean v. American Press Co. (1936) [other citations omitted], or the free exercise of religion, Hamilton v. Regents (1934) [other citations omitted] … In these and other situations immunities that are valid as against the federal government by force of the specific pledges of particular amendments have been found to be implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, and thus, through the Fourteenth Amendment, become valid as against the states …
The line of division may seem to be wavering and broken if there is a hasty catalogue of the cases on the one side and the other. Reflection and analysis will induce a different view. There emerges the perception of a rationalizing principle which gives to discrete instances a proper order and coherence. The right to trial by jury and the immunity from prosecution except as the result of an indictment may have value and importance. Even so, they are not of the very essence of a scheme of ordered liberty. To abolish them is not to violate a “principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental.” Snyder v. Massachusetts (1934) [other citations omitted] … Few would be so narrow or provincial as to maintain that a fair and enlightened system of justice would be impossible without them. What is true of jury trials and indictments is true also, as the cases show, of the immunity from compulsory self-incrimination. Twining v. New Jersey (1908). This too might be lost, and justice still be done. Indeed, today as in the past there are students of our penal system who look upon the immunity as a mischief rather than a benefit, and who would limit its scope, or destroy it altogether! No doubt there would remain the need to give protection against torture, physical or mental. Justice, however, would not perish if the accused were subject to a duty to respond to orderly inquiry. The exclusion of these immunities and privileges from the privileges and immunities protected against the action of the states has not been arbitrary or casual. It has been dictated by -a study and appreciation of the meaning, the essential implications, of liberty itself …
We reach a different plane of social and moral values when we pass to the privileges and immunities that have been taken over from the earlier articles of the federal bill of rights and brought within the Fourteenth Amendment by a process of absorption. These in their origin were effective against the federal government alone. If the Fourteenth Amendment has absorbed them, the process of absorption has had its source in the belief that neither liberty nor justice would exist if they were sacrificed …
Our survey of the cases serves, we think, to justify the statement that the dividing line between them, if not unfaltering throughout its course, has been true for the most part to a unifying principle. On which side of the line the case made out by the appellant has appropriate location must be the next inquiry and the final one. Is that kind of double jeopardy to which the statute has subjected him a hardship so acute and shocking that our polity will not endure it? Does it violate those “fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions”? The answer surely must be “no.” What the answer would have to be if the state were permitted after a trial free from error to try the accused over again or to bring another case against him, we have no occasion to consider. We deal with the statute before us and no other. The state is not attempting to wear the accused out by a multitude of cases with accumulated trials. It asks no more than this, that the case against him shall go on until there shall be a trial free from the corrosion of substantial legal error. State v. Felch (1918). This is not cruelty at all, nor even vexation in any immoderate degree. If the trial had been infected with error adverse to the accused, there might have been review at his instance, and as often as necessary to purge the vicious taint. A reciprocal privilege, subject at all times to the discretion of the presiding judge, State v. Carabetta (1927), has now been granted to the state. There is here no seismic innovation. The edifice of justice stands, its symmetry, to many, greater than before …
The conviction of appellant is not in derogation of any privileges or immunities that belong to him as a citizen of the United States.
There is argument in his behalf that the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as well as the due process clause has been flouted by the judgment … gives all the answer that is necessary.
The judgment is
Affirmed.
Wolf v. Colorado (1949)
338 U.S. 25 (1949)
Vote: 6-3
Opinion: J. Frankfurter
Decision: Affirmed
Majority: J. Frankfurter, joined by J. Vinson, J. Reed, J. Jackson, J. Burton
Concurring: J. Black
Dissent: J. Murphy, joined by J. Rutledge, and J. Douglas
MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER delivered the opinion of the Court.
The precise question for consideration is this: Does a conviction by a State court for a State offense deny the “due process of law” required by the Fourteenth Amendment, solely because evidence that was admitted at the trial was obtained under circumstances which would have rendered it inadmissible in a prosecution for violation of a federal law in a court of the United States because there deemed to be an infraction of the Fourth Amendment as applied in Weeks v. United States (1914)?…
The notion that the “due process of law” guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment is shorthand for the first eight amendments of the Constitution and thereby incorporates them has been rejected by this Court again and again, after impressive consideration …
For purposes of ascertaining the restrictions which the Due Process Clause imposed upon the States in the enforcement of their criminal law, we adhere to the views expressed in Palko v. Connecticut, supra, 302 U. S. 319. That decision speaks to us with the great weight of the authority, particularly in matters of civil liberty, of a court that included Mr. Chief Justice Hughes, Mr. Justice Brandeis, Mr. Justice Stone and Mr. Justice Cardozo, to name only the dead in rejecting the suggestion that that the Due Process Clause incorporated the original Bill of Rights …
Due process of law thus conveys neither formal nor fixed nor narrow requirements. It is the compendious expression for all those rights which the courts must enforce because they are basic to our free society. But basic rights do not become petrified as of any one time, even though, as a matter of human experience, some may not too rhetorically be called eternal verities. It is of the very nature of a free society to advance in its standards of what is deemed reasonable and right. Representing as it does a living principle, due process is not confined within a permanent catalogue of what may at a given time be deemed the limits or the essentials of fundamental rights …
The security of one’s privacy against arbitrary intrusion by the police-which is at the core of the Fourth Amendment-is basic to a free society. It is therefore implicit in “the concept of ordered liberty” and as such enforceable against the States through the Due Process Clause. The knock at the door, whether by day or by night, as a prelude to a search, without authority of law but solely on the authority of the police, did not need the commentary of recent history to be condemned as inconsistent with the conception of human rights enshrined in the history and the basic constitutional documents of English-speaking peoples …
Granting that in practice the exclusion of evidence may be an effective way of deterring unreasonable searches, it is not for this Court to condemn as falling below the minimal standards assured by the Due Process Clause a State’s reliance upon other methods which, if consistently enforced, would be equally effective … We cannot brush aside the experience of States which deem the incidence of such conduct by the police too slight to call for a deterrent remedy not by way of disciplinary measures but by overriding the relevant rules of evidence. There are, moreover, reasons for excluding evidence unreasonably obtained by the federal police which are less compelling in the case of police under State or local authority. The public opinion of a community can far more effectively be exerted against oppressive conduct on the part of police directly responsible to the community itself than can local opinion, sporadically aroused, be brought to bear upon remote authority pervasively exerted throughout the country.
We hold, therefore, that in a prosecution in a State court for a State crime the Fourteenth Amendment does not forbid the admission of evidence obtained by an unreasonable search and seizure. And though we have interpreted the Fourth Amendment to forbid the admission of such evidence, a different question would be presented if Congress under its legislative powers were to pass a statute purporting to negate the Weeks doctrine. We would then be faced with the problem of the respect to be accorded the legislative judgment on an issue as to which, in default of that judgment, we have been forced to depend upon our own. Problems of a converse character, also not before us, would be presented should Congress under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment undertake to enforce the rights there guaranteed by attempting to make the Weeks doctrine binding upon the States.
Affirmed.