Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 15.pdf/324

 A Century of Federal Judicature. police organization and otherwise, which are adapted for the protection of the lives and property of citizens, for the dispersion of mobs, for the arrest of thieves and assassins, for the watch which is kept over the com munity, as well as over this class of people, is more efficient than punishment of crimes after they have been committed. If a person in the situation of Judge Field could have no other guarantee of his personal safety, while engaged in the conscientious discharge of a disagreeable duty, than the fact that if he was murdered his murderer would be subject to the laws of a State and by those laws could be punished, the security would be very insuf ficient. . . . We do not believe that the gov ernment of the United States is thus ineffi cient, or that its Constitution and laws have left the high officers of the government so defenceless and unprotected." In the construction of the commerce clause of the Constitution, also, he favored a broad, national policy. Perhaps his opinion in Crandall v. Nevada, 6- Wall. 35, denying the right of a Stat£ .to.Jevy a tax upon persons residing in the, State who may wish to leave it, or upon persons not residing in it who may have occasion to pass through it, is his most im pressive statement of his doctrine of nation ality in this connection. His opinion in the case of the Clinton Bridge, Woolworth, 150, in favor of the right of Congress to assume the control and regulation of all railroad traf fic which exceeds the bounds of a single State, was the first declaration of the author ity of Congress over this subject. And his opinions in general upon this subject, culmin ating in Fargo т. 'Michigan, 121 U. S. 230, maintained a broad scope of national author ity. It was, however, by his exertions in favor of the marked extension of the authority of the court in the use of the writ of habeas corpus that he reached the opposite extreme from the view of the police power which fie" had championed in the Slaughterhouse Cases.

285

Ex parte Lange, 18 Wall. 165; Kring v. Mis souri, 107 U. S. 221; Medley, Petitioner, 134 ib. 160. His view was that "there is no more sacred duty of a court than, in a case properly before it, to maintain unimpaired those se curities for the personal rights of the indi vidual which have received for ages the sanc tions of the jurist and the statesman; and in such cases no narrow or illiberal construction should be given to the words of the funda mental law in which they are embodied." Ex parte Lange, supra. But it may be doubted whether he did not occasionally carry this theory to unwarranted extremes; in Kring v. Missouri, supra, for instance, it would seem that Justice Mathews' dissenting opinion em bodied the better reasoning. The fact that Justice Miller showed no dis crimination, in granting the writ of habeas corpus, between Federal and State sentences, serves to call attention to the fact that he was a firm defender of private rights. Be lieving in a broad and liberal construction of the political powers of the national govern ment, he was nevertheless a vigorous and consistent defender of the civil rights of the citizen. Justice Miller delivered many opin ions which are recognized landmarks in the judicial history of individual liberty. One of the most famous of these cases is Kilbourn î'. Thompson, 103 U. S. 168, con cerning the right of the House of Represen tatives to punish for contempt. The House, as well as the Senate, had been in the habit of calling witnesses before committees to tes tify in regard to various matters in which an investigation had been ordered. They had also exercised very freely the power to punish by fine and imprisonment for refusal to an swer questions propounded in such examina tions. Upon the bankruptcy of the banking house of Jay Cooke and Company, the gov ernment being a large creditor, a committee of the House was appointed to inquire into the matter, particularly with reference to cer¡ tain settlements which were deemed adverse