Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 8.djvu/360

344 344 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. the prior cases, and holding that the Legislature was forbidden by the Constitution to grant such an authority.^ Meantime, in July, 1857, the city of Dubuque, acting under legislative authority, issued certain coupon bonds in payment for stock of the Dubuque Western Railroad Company. The bonds were payable to bearer in New York. Default was made in the payment of interest, and the plaintiffs, who were holders for value, sued the city on the overdue coupons in the United States District Court for the District of Iowa, then sitting as a Circuit Court. The defence was that the law authorizing the bonds was unconsti- tutional. To the alleged conflict between the law and the Con- stitution the plaintiffs demurred. The demurrer was overruled and judgment entered for the defendants, whereupon the plaintiffs sued out a writ of error to the Supreme Court of the United States, which reversed the judgment and sent the case back for trial. The case turned wholly upon the question of legislative power, and it was urged for the city that Inasmuch as this question had been decided adversely to the power by the Supreme Court of Iowa, it only remained for the Supreme Court of the United States to apply the undoubted law of the State and to affirm the judg- ment. This view of their duty, however, was not acceptable to the court, and all the judges, except Mr. Justice Miller, who vigor- ously dissented, concurred in the feeble and impertinent^ opinion delivered by Mr. Justice Swayne, who advanced as the court's reasons for disregarding the Iowa decision (i) that the law could not be considered settled, since the Supreme Court of Iowa had once changed its mind and might do so again ; and (2) that if it were settled, it could only apply in future, and was harmless to invalidate contracts made before its declaration. " The sound and true rule is," the opinion quoted from Ohio Life and Trust Co. v. Debolt,^ " that if the contract when made was valid by the laws of the State as then expounded by all departments of the govern- ment, and administered in its courts of justice, its validity and 1 The State v. County of Wapello, 13 Iowa, 388. 2 " We shall never immolate truth, justice, and the law, because a State tribunal has erected the altar and decreed the sacrifice." i Wallace, 206. 8 16 How. 416, 432. This case came to the Supreme Court by writ of error to the Supreme Court of Ohio, and the Federal question involved was whether the obligation of a contract was impaired by an Act of the legislature of that State. The existence of a contract in the case was held to be a question for the independent judgment of the Supreme Court. The opinion of Mr. Chief Justice Taney had therefore no application at all to Gelpcke v. Dubuque.