Doctrine of Inalienability

Doctrine of Inalienability as Applied to Eminent Domain, Taxing, and Police Powers

The second of the doctrines mentioned above, whereby the principle of the subordination of all persons, corporate and individual alike, to the legislative power of the state has been fortified, is the doctrine that certain of the state's powers are inalienable, and that any attempt by a state to alienate them, upon any consideration whatsoever, is ipso facto void and hence incapable to producing a “contract” within the meaning of Article I, § 10. One of the earliest cases to assert this principle was decided in New York in 1826. The corporation of the City of New York, having conveyed certain lands for the purposes of a church and cemetery together with a covenant for quiet enjoyment, later passed a by-law forbidding their use as a cemetery. In denying an action against the city for breach of covenant, the state court said the defendants “had no power as a party, [to the covenant] to make a contract which should control or embarrass their legislative powers and duties.” 1

More about Doctrine of Inalienability

The Supreme Court first applied similar doctrine in 1848 in a case involving a grant of exclusive right to construct a bridge at a specified locality. Sustaining the right of the State of Vermont to make a new grant to a competing company, the Court held that the obligation of the earlier exclusive grant was sufficiently recognized in making just compensation for it; and that corporate franchises, like all other forms of property, are subject to the overruling power of eminent domain.2 This reasoning was reinforced by an appeal to the theory of state sovereignty, which was held to involve the corollary of the inalienability of all the principal powers of a state.

Doctrine of Inalienability: Developments

The subordination of all charter rights and privileges to the power of eminent domain has been maintained by the Court ever since; not even an explicit agreement by the state to forego the exercise of the power will avail against it.3 Conversely, the state may revoke an improvident grant of public property without recourse to the power of eminent domain, such a grant being inherently beyond the power of the state to make. Thus, when the legislature of Illinois in 1869 devised to the Illinois Central Railroad Company, its successors and assigns, the state's right and title to nearly a thousand acres of submerged land under Lake Michigan along the harbor front of Chicago, and four years later sought to repeal the grant, the Court, a four-to-three decision, sustained an action by the state to recover the lands in question. Justice Field wrote for the majority: “Such abdication is not consistent with the exercise of that trust which requires the government of the State to preserve such waters for the use of public. The trust devolving upon the State for the public, and which can only be discharged by the management and control of property in which the public has an interest, cannot be relinquished by a transfer of the property. . . . Any grant of the kind is necessarily revocable, and the exercise of the trust by which the property was held by the State can be resumed at any time.” 4

Other Aspects

On the other hand, repeated endeavors to subject tax exemptions to the doctrine of inalienability, though at times supported by powerful minorities on the Bench, have failed.5 As recently as January 1952, the Court ruled that the Georgia Railway Company was entitled to seek an injunction in the federal courts against an attempt by Georgia's Revenue Commission to compel it to pay ad valorem taxes contrary to the terms of its special charter issued in 1833. In answer to the argument that this was a suit contrary to the Eleventh Amendment, the Court declared that the immunity from federal jurisdiction created by the Amendment “does not extend to individuals who act as officers without constitutional authority.” 6

Other Issues

The leading case involving the police power is Stone v. Mississippi. 7 In 1867, the legislature of Mississippi chartered a company to which it expressly granted the power to conduct a lottery. Two years later, the state adopted a new Constitution which contained a provision forbidding lotteries, and a year later the legislature passed an act to put this provision into effect. In upholding this act and the constitutional provision on which it was based, the Court said: “The power of governing is a trust committed by the people to the government, no part of which can be granted away. The people, in their sovereign capacity, have established their agencies for the preservation of the public health and the public morals, and the protection of public and private rights,” and these agencies can neither give away nor sell their discretion. All that one can get by a charter permitting the business of conducting a lottery “is suspension of certain governmental rights in his favor, subject to withdrawal at will.” 8

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The Court shortly afterward applied the same reasoning in a case challenging the right of Louisiana to invade the exclusive privilege of a corporation engaged in the slaughter of cattle in New Orleans by granting another company the right to engage in the same business. Although the state did not offer to compensate the older company for the lost monopoly, its action was sustained on the ground that it had been taken in the interest of the public health.9 When, however, the City of New Orleans, in reliance on this precedent, sought to repeal an exclusive franchise which it had granted a company for fifty years to supply gas to its inhabitants, the Court interposed its veto, explaining that in this instance neither the public health, the public morals, nor the public safety was involved.10

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Later decisions, nonetheless, apply the principle of inalienability broadly. To quote from one: “It is settled that neither the 'contract' clause nor the 'due process' clause has the effect of overriding the power to the State to establish all regulations that are reasonably necessary to secure the health, safety, good order, comfort, or general welfare of the community; that this power can neither be abdicated nor bargained away, and is inalienable even by express grant; and all contract and property rights are held subject to its fair exercise.” 11

It would scarcely suffice today for a company to rely upon its charter privileges or upon special concessions from a state in resisting the application to it of measures alleged to have been enacted under the police power thereof; if this claim is sustained, the obligation of the contract clause will not avail, and if it is not, the due process of law clause of the Fourteenth Amendment will furnish a sufficient reliance. That is to say, the discrepancy that once existed between the Court's theory of an overriding police power in these two adjoining fields of constitutional law is today apparently at an end. Indeed, there is usually no sound reason why rights based on public grant should be regarded as more sacrosanct than rights that involve the same subject matter but are of different provenance.

Resources

References

This text about Doctrine of Inalienability is based on “The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation”, published by the U.S. Government Printing Office.

[Footnote 1] Brick Presbyterian Church v. New York, 5 Cow. (N.Y.) 538, 540 (1826).

[Footnote 2] West River Bridge Co. v. Dix, 47 U.S. (6 How.) 507 (1848). See also Backus v. Lebanon, 11 N.H. 19 (1840); White River Turnpike Co. v. Vermont Cent. R. Co., 21 Vt. 590 (1849); and Bonaparte v. Camden & A.R. Co., 3 Fed. Cas. 821 (No. 1617) (C.C.D.N.J. 1830).

[Footnote 3] Pennsylvania Hospital v. City of Philadelphia, 245 U.S. 20 (1917).

[Footnote 4] Illinois Cent. R.R. v. Illinois, 146 U.S. 387, 453, 455 (1892).

[Footnote 5] See especially Home of the Friendless v. Rouse, 75 U.S. (8 Wall.) 430 (1869), and The Washington University v. Rouse, 75 U.S. (8 Wall.) 439 (1869).

[Footnote 6] Georgia R.R. & Banking Co. v. Redwine, 342 U.S. 299, 305-06 (1952). The Court distinguished In re Ayers, 123 U.S. 443 (1887) on the ground that the action there was barred “as one in substance directed at the State merely to obtain specific performance of a contract with the State.” 342 U.S. at 305.

[Footnote 7] 101 U.S. 814 (1880).

[Footnote 8] 101 U.S. at 820-21.

[Footnote 9] Butchers' Union Slaughter-House and Live-Stock Landing Co. v. Crescent City Live-Stock Landing and Slaughter-House Co., 111 U.S. 746 (1884).

[Footnote 10] New Orleans Gas Co. v. Louisiana Light Co., 115 U.S. 650 (1885).

[Footnote 11] Atlantic Coast Line R.R. v. City of Goldsboro, 232 U.S. 548, 558 (1914). See also Chicago & Alton R.R. v. Tranbarger, 238 U.S. 67 (1915); Pennsylvania Hospital v. Philadelphia, 245 U.S. 20 (1917); where the police power and eminent domain are treated on the same basis in respect of inalienability; Wabash R.R. v. Defiance, 167 U.S. 88, 97 (1897); Home Tel. & Tel. Co. v. City of Los Angeles, 211 U.S. 265 (1908).

Tables of Contents

• Doctrine of Inalienability and other Topics in the Contents – Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution
• U.S. Constitutional Law Category
• List of amendments to the U.S. Constitution
• Doctrine of Inalienability and other Topics in the Constitution Contents
• Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution (Table of Contents)
• Clauses of the Constitution (Table of Contents)