Muskrat v. United States

The Constitution allows a review of the constitutionality of laws only in the context of a concrete dispute. In this case, the plaintiff and the defendant are cooperating to achieve a common desired goal, for which the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction.

The United States Constitution, Article III

The decision in the case of Muskrat v. United States was an important state legal ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States, in which it rejected a general power to test the constitutionality of laws outside of a concrete dispute.

Background

On 1 July 1902, the United States Congress passed a law that established the distribution of land within the nation of the Cherokee. In order to examine the constitutionality of the law, Congress in 1907 decided in a household law, provide the Cherokee funds to attorneys' fees and court fees. Thus, the possibility should be given to initiate proceedings before the United States Court of Claims with subsequent appeal to the Supreme Court. As a result of this law filed several suits a person, including David Muskrat and J. Henry Dick, who opposed the partition of the country, as well as William Brown and Levi B. Gritts who fought against a ban.

Decision

The court ruled unanimously that it is not competent for processes of this type. Judge William R. Day pointed in the court's opinion, written by him to the third article of the Constitution of the United States, which limits the judicial powers of the Court to specific litigation. Although the United States occur in the proceedings as a defendant, the interests of both parties to the dispute were not contradictory and therefore not really in dispute. Rather was the aim of the process, similar to get the opinion of the Court regarding the constitutionality of the law an abstract norm control, without that the result would have concrete legal consequences in this case. Since the Constitution does not provide for such competence, the case must be dismissed.

Swell

  • Judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States
Edward Douglass White John Marshall Harlan Joseph McKenna Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Horace Harmon Lurton
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