Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad v. Chicago

166 U.S. 226

Case Year: 1897

Case Ruling: 9-0

Opinion Justice: Harlan

FACTS

As the city of Chicago grew, it acquired under the principle of eminent domain, large pieces of property belonging to railroad companies and private citizens. Based on local ordinances, the city offered property owners what it considered just compensation for the land. If owners considered an offer unacceptable, they could challenge the city in county court, and many did so. In this particular county court, a pattern emerged: individual property owners received almost $13,000 for their land, while the railroad companies were given $1. Viewing this apparent inequity as a violation of the Fifth Amendment's guarantee that private property shall not "be taken for public use, without just compensation," one railroad company took its case to the Illinois Supreme Court. When the judges affirmed the county court's decision, the company appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the justices to interpret the Fifth Amendment as John Barron (in Barron v. Baltimore)had sixty-four years before: the Just Compensation (or Takings) Clause should apply to states. This time, the railroads had a weapon that did not exist in Barron's day--the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. Would this Court do what the justices under John Marshall in Barron had refused to do: rule that the states must abide by the Fifth Amendment's commands regarding public use of private property?

MR. JUSTICE HARLAN DELIVERED THE OPINION OF THE COURT.

... It is... necessary to inquire at the outset whether "due process of law" requires compensation to be made or secured to the owner of private property taken for public use....

... [A] State may not, by any of its agencies, disregard the prohibitions of the Fourteenth Amendment. Its judicial authorities may keep within the letter of the statute prescribing forms of procedure in the courts and give the parties interested the fullest opportunity to be heard, and it might be that its final action would be inconsistent with that amendment. In determining what is due process of law regard must be had to substance, not to form. This court, referring to the Fourteenth Amendment, has said: "Can a State make anything due process of law which, by its own legislation, it chooses to declare such? To affirm this is to hold that the prohibition to the States is of no avail, or has no application where the invasion of private rights is effected under the forms of state legislation."... The same question could be propounded, and the same answer should be made, in reference to judicial proceedings inconsistent with the requirement of due process of law. If compensation for private property taken for public use is an essential element of due process of law as ordained by the Fourteenth Amendment, then the final judgment of a state court, under the authority of which the property is in fact taken, is to be deemed the act of the State within the meaning of that amendment.

It is proper now to inquire whether the due process of law enjoined by the Fourteenth Amendment requires compensation to be made or adequately secured to the owner of private property taken for public use under the authority of a State.

In Davidson v. New Orleans, it was said that a statute declaring in terms, without more, that the full and exclusive title to a described piece of land belonging to one person should be and is hereby vested in another person, would, if effectual, deprive the former of his property without due process of law, within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.... Such an enactment would not receive judicial sanction in any country having a written constitution distributing the powers of government among three coordinate departments, and committing to the judiciary, expressly or by implication, authority to enforce the provisions of such constitution. It would be treated not as an exertion of legislative power, but as a sentence--an act of spoliation. Due protection of the rights of property has been regarded as a vital principle of republican institutions. "Next in degree to the right of personal liberty," Mr. Broom in his work on Constitutional Law says, "is that of enjoying private property without undue interference or molestation."... The requirement that the property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation is but "an affirmance of a great doctrine established by the common law for the protection of private property. It is founded in natural equity, and is laid down by jurists as a principle of universal law. Indeed, in a free government almost all other rights would become worthless if the government possessed an uncontrollable power over the private fortune of every citizen."...

In our opinion, a judgment of a state court, even if it be authorized by statute, whereby private property is taken for the State or under its direction for public use, without compensation made or secured to the owner, is, upon principle and authority, wanting in the due process of law required by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, and the affirmance of such judgment by the highest court of the State is a denial by that State of a right secured to the owner by that instrument.