Butz v. City of Muscatine/Dissent Miller

Mr. Justice MILLER, dissenting; the CHIEF JUSTICE concurring in the dissent.

In the case of Warren v. Leffingwell, this court, speaking by my learned brother who has just read its opinion, declared that 'the construction given to a State statute by the highest judicial tribunal of such State, is regarded as a part of the statute and is as binding upon the courts of the United States as the text;' and it was further said that 'if the highest judicial tribunal of a State adopt new views as to the proper construction of such a statute and reverse its former decision, this court will follow the latest settled adjudications.' This was announced as the doctrine of this court on a full review of numerous reported cases.

When at the succeeding term of the court the first of a series of suits based on bonds issued by municipalities in Iowa came before us, it was found that such bonds could not be sustained consistently with that doctrine. Accordingly the court, by the same learned member, in the case of Gelpcke v. Dubuque, delivered its opinion declaring that, in cases of contracts, it would not follow the later decisions of the State courts construing their own constitution where the consequence would be to declare such contracts void, if there had been prior decisions that they were valid. And as late as the last term, in the case of Lee County v. Rogers, the court, speaking by Mr. Justice Nelson, distinctly recognizes the existence of those prior decisions of the State courts, under which the bonds were taken by the holders, as the ground on which the subsequent decisions of the same court are disregarded.

The opinion of the court in the present case, delivered by the same learned judge who, on its behalf, in Leffingwell v. Warren, declared that this court would follow the latest settled adjudication of the State courts, and in Gelpcke v. Dubuque only claimed to modify that doctrine so far as to hold contracts valid which had the support of some prior decisions of the State courts, now holds, in a matter which does not involve the validity of contracts, but a construction of State statutes on the amount of tax which may be levied under them, that the repeated decisions of the State courts on that subject, in which courts there have never been any contrary decisions, will be disregarded entirely, and that this court will give to such statutes a construction directly opposed to that by which the State courts are governed.

It is an entire and unqualified overthrow of the rule imposed by Congress and uniformly acted on by this court up to the year 1863, that the decisions of the State courts must govern this court in the construction of State statutes.

There is not here even the excuse that the decisions concern the validity of a contract, for the contract is admitted, and the bondholder has his judgment in the Circuit Court, based on the contract.

But it relates to the question of what taxes are authorized to be levied by State statutes, a question it would seem of all others most proper to be determined by the State courts.

Nor is there any pretence that the statute as construed by the State court impairs the obligation of a contract, because the limitation of the amount of taxes which might be levied by the city of Muscatine existed long before the bonds were issued which are sought to be enforced by this proceeding, and this limitation was a part of the very statute under which those bonds were claimed to be issued, namely, the charter of the city of Muscatine. It was under this very charter, with this express limitation of the taxing power, that this court held these bonds to be valid.

The provision of the code of 1851, which required the officers of municipalities to levy the taxes necessary to pay judgments against them, was in existence when the charter of Muscatine was created, which limited the taxing power of its authorities to one per cent. per annum. The later law must repeal the former if they are inconsistent. But they are not so. It is only necessary to hold that persons giving credit to the city, with a knowledge of this limit to its taxing powers, must do so on the condition of waiting until that amount of tax will pay them, or until the legislature shall remove the restriction; and that within that limit the code gives them a right to compel the exercise of the taxing power to pay the debt so created. Such has been the reasonable construction given to the code by the courts of Iowa for many years and by the Circuit Court of the United States for that district for several years past, and never contradicted by any court until the present time.

These frequent dissents in this class of subjects are as distasteful to me as they can be to any one else. But when I am compelled, as I was last spring, by the decisions of this court, to enter an order to commit to jail at one time over a hundred of the best citizens of Iowa, for obeying as they thought their oath of office required them to do, an injunction issued by a competent court of their own State, founded, as these gentlemen conscientiously believed, on the true interpretation of their own statute, an injunction which, in my own private judgment, they were legally bound to obey, I must be excused if, when sitting here, I give expression to convictions which my duty compels me to disregard in the Circuit Court.