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CHAPTER XIII.

INTERSTATE RELATIONS: THE COMITY CLAUSE.

§ 99. Privileges and Immunities.

It

Article IV, Section 2 of the Constitution declares that "the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States." This provision has for its general aim the prevention of arbitrary and vexatious discriminations by the several States in favor of their own citizens and against the citizens of other States. "It was undoubtedly the object of the clause in question," say the Supreme Court in Paul v. Virginia," to place the citizens of each State upon the same footing with citizens of other States, so far as the advantages resulting from citizenship in those States are concerned. relieves them from the disabilities of alienage in other States; it inhibits discriminating legislation against them by other States; it gives them the right of free ingress into other States, and egress from them; it insures to them in other States the same freedom possessed by the citizens of those States in the acquisition and enjoyment of property and in the pursuit of happiness; and it secures to them in other States the equal protection of their laws. It has been justly said that no provision in the Constitution has tended so strongly to constitute the citizens of the United States one people as this.2 Indeed, without some provision of the kind, removing from the citizens of each State the disabilities of alienage in the other, and giving them equality of privilege with citizens of those States, the Republic would have constituted little more than a league of States; it would not have constituted the Union which now exists."

In the early ease in the federal Circuit Court of Corfield v. Coryell, as has been earlier noted, Justice Washington attempted

18 Wall. 168; 19 I ed. 357.

2 Citing Lemmon v. The People of N. Y., 20 N. Y. 607.

34 Wash. C. C. 371.

a still more particular, though not an exhaustive, enumeration of the privileges and immunities that are protected from state discrimination.*

Much of Justice Washington's language was obiter, the determination of the enumerated privileges and immunities not being necessarily involved in the case. Many of these rights have, however, in subsequent cases, been specifically passed upon and sustained, and it is believed that there is not one of them that would not be declared by the Supreme Court, in a proper case, to be beyond the discriminating power of the States. Thus in Ward v. Maryland it was held that a State might not levy a license tax upon temporary residents, as a condition precedent to allowing them to sell certain goods. So also the granting of licenses to trade cannot be limited to residents. Nor can a State, except by proper quarantine and other police regulations, deny to citizens of other States free ingress and egress, or the right to export or import property.8

In Ward v. Maryland the court say: "Attempt will not be made to define the words 'privileges and immunities,' or to specify the rights which they are intended to secure and protect, beyond what may be necessary to the decision of the case before the court. Beyond doubt, those words are words of very comprehensive meaning, but it will be sufficient to say that the clause plainly and unmistakably secures and protects the right of a citizen of one State to pass into any other State of the Union, for the purpose of engaging in lawful commerce, trade, or business, without molestation, to acquire personal property, to take and hold real estate, to maintain actions in the courts of the States, and to be exempt from any higher taxes or excises than are im

4 See ante, p. 179.

5 See especially two articles by W. S. Meyers in Michigan Law Review, I, pp. 286, 364, entitled “The Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the Several States."

612 Wall. 418; 20 L. ed. 449.

In re Wilson, 15 Fed. 511.

8 This last is unconstitutional as well by the commerce clause of the Constitution.

posed by the State upon its own citizens. Comprehensive as the power of the States is to lay and collect taxes and excises, it is nevertheless clear, in the judgment of the court, that the power cannot be exercised to any extent in a manner forbidden by the Constitution; and, inasmuch as the Constitution provides that the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States, it follows that the defendant might lawfully sell or offer or expose for sale within the district prescribed in the indictment any goods which the permanent residents of the State might sell or offer or expose for sale in that district, without being subjected to any higher tax or excise than that exacted by law of such permanent residents."

§ 100. Political Privileges.

The interstate comity clause of the federal Constitution does not compel the several States to grant to resident citizens of the other States immediately upon their entrance into the State the political privileges extended to their own citizens. This the Supreme Court has held from the very beginning and has recently reaffirmed in the case of Blake v. McClung." "A State," says the court in that case, "may by rule uniform in its operation as to citizens of the several States, require residence within its limits for a given time before a citizen of another State who becomes a resident thereof shall exercise the right of suffrage or become eligible to office. It has never been supposed that regulations of that character materially interfered with the enjoyment by citizens of each State of the privileges and immunities secured by the Constitution to citizens of the several States. The Constitution forbids only such legislation affecting citizens of the respective States as will substantially or practically put a citizen of one State in a condition of alienage when he is within or removes to another State, or when asserting in another State the rights that commonly appertain to those who are part of the political community known as the People of the United States, by and for whom the Government of the Union was ordained and established."

9172 U. S. 239; 19 Sup. Ct. Rep. 165; 43 L. ed. 432.

Finally, it is to be said, the several States may impose upon non-residents such special limitations and obligations as are, in aim and effect, not discriminative but reasonably necessary for the protection of their own citizens from fraud, disease, or injury of any sort. Thus, as an example, though the citizens of other States may not be forbidden to sue in the courts of the State, they may be required to give bonds for costs not exacted of residents.10

In connection with this police power of the States a difficult question is raised as to the constitutionality of laws conditioning the exercise of certain professions, such as law, medicine, and dentistry upon residence in the State for specified periods of time. There is no question but that the State in the legitimate exercise of its police power may require evidence of good character or sufficient technical attainments of all persons desiring to practice these professions. A certain period of residence in the State may, therefore, possibly be a proper requirement, in order that the applicant's moral character and general attainments may be learned, but it would seem that if this required period be made unnecessarily long, it might be held that non-residents are unduly discriminated against. We have, however, no cases in which this position has been taken.

§ 101. State Proprietary Privileges.

In McCready v. Virginia" the important limitation of the clause was established that a citizen of one State is not, of constitutional right, entitled to share upon equal terms with the citi

10 in Chemung Canal Bank v. Lowery (93 U. S. 72; 23 L. ed. 806) it was held that a Wisconsin statute was not in violation of the equal privileges clause because it provided that when a defendant to a suit was out of the State, the statute of limitations should not run against a resident plaintiff, but that it should if he were a non-resident. The court held that this was a reasonable provision. "If," said the court, "the statute does not run as between non-resident creditors and their debtors, it might often happen that a right of action would be extinguished, perhaps for years, in the State where the parties reside; and yet, if the defendant should be found in Wisconsin, it may be only in a railroad train, a suit could be sprung upon him after the claim had been forgotten. The laws of Wisconsin would thus be used as a trap to catch the unwary defendant after the laws which had always governed the case had barred any recovery." This reasoning seems hardly convincing. 11 94 U. S. 391; 24 L. ed. 248.

zens of another State those proprietary interests which may be said to belong generally to that State as such. This case involved the right of cultivating oysters on beds of the tide waters of the State. The court in its opinion say: "We think we may safely hold that the citizens of one State are not invested by this clause of the Constitution with any interest in the common property of the citizens of another State." 12

§ 102. Privileges of One State Not Carried into Other States.

The comity clause does not entitle a citizen within his own State to privileges and immunities which may be granted by other States to their citizens. In other words, it does not require that when a right is granted by any one of the States of the Union to its citizens, it thereby becomes a right which all the other States must grant to their citizens. This claim, extreme as it may appear, was raised in McKane v. Durston13 but negatived

12 The opinion continues: "If Virginia had by law provided for the sale of its once vast public domain, and a division of the proceeds among its own people, no one, we venture to say, would contend that the citizens of other States had a constitutional right to the enjoyment of this privilege of Virginia eitizenship. Neither if, instead of selling, the State had appropriated the same property to be used as a common by its people for the purposes of agriculture, could the citizens of other States avail themselves of such a privilege. And the reason is obvious; the right thus granted is not a privilege or immunity of general but of special citizenship. It does not belong of right to the citizens of all free government,' but only to the citizens of Virginia, on account of the peculiar circumstances in which they are placed. They, and they alone, owned the property to be sold or used, and they alone had the power to dispose of it as they saw fit. They owned it not by virtue of citizenship merely, but of citizenship and domicile united; that is to say, by virtue of a citizenship confined to that particular locality. The planting of oysters in the soil covered by water owned in common by the People of the State is not different in principle from that of planting corn upon dry land held in the same way. Both are for the purpose of cultivation and profit; and if the State, in the regulation of its public domain, can grant to its own citizens the exclusive use of dry lands, we see no reason why it may not do the same thing in respect to such as are covered by water. And as all concede that a State may grant to one of its citizens the exclusive use of part of the common property, the conclusion would seem to follow, that it might by appropriate legislation confine the use of the whole to its own people alone."

13 153 U. S. 684; 14 Sup. Ct. Rep. 913; 38 L. ed. 867.

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