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338 338 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. struing the legislative Acts of that government. . . . On this prin- ciple the construction given by this court to the Constitution and laws of the United States is received by all as the true construc- tion; and on the same principle the construction given by the courts of the several States to the legislative acts of those States is received as true, unless they come in conflict with the Constitu- tion, laws, or treaties of the United States."^ In a later case, Shelby v. Guy ,2 the Supreme Court, in declar- ing the meaning to be given to the words "beyond the seas" in a Tennessee statute, said : " Nor is it questionable that a fixed and received construction of their respective statute laws in their own courts makes, in fact, a part of the statute law of the country, however we may doubt the propriety of that construction. It is obvious that this admission may at times involve us in seeming inconsistencies, as where States have adopted the same statutes and their courts differ in the construction. Yet that course is necessarily indicated by the duty imposed on us to administer, as between certain individuals, the laws of the respective States, ac- cording to the best lights we possess of what those laws are." There is certainly no room in this argument for the distinction which has been taken. It applies with equal force to all the final decisions of State courts. The judicial department of a government is not more appropriately engaged in the exposition of statutes than in the declaration of unwritten law. The latter is in truth its principal business. And the judicial construction of a statute is no more a part of the law of a State than any other decision. It is liable to be overruled, amended, or qualified, in common with other adjudications. The suggestion that a judicial construction makes a part of the statute, is more plausible than sound. If a statute in New York commands that certain instruments shall be sealed, and the Court of Appeals decides that the letters " L. S." on those in- struments make a seal, is that decision any more a part of the law of New York than if it had been made in exposition of the common law? It is not literally a part of the statute. To allow to it the effi- cacy of written law, admits all that is claimed for a common law decision, for few statutes can be interpreted without resorting to the common law for rules of construction and for definitions. Would the same distinction be made to-day in construing the clause of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution, which . 1 Elmendorf v. Taylor, 10 Wheat. 152, 159. ^11 Wheat. 361, 367.