necessary, retrospective operation is withheld. Take the cases where a court of final appeal has declared a statute void, and afterwards, reversing itself, declares the statute valid. Intervening transactions have been governed by the first decision. What shall be said of the validity of such transactions when the decision is overruled? Most courts in a spirit of realism have held that the operation of the statute has been suspended in the interval.[1] It may be hard to square such a ruling with abstract dogmas and definitions. When so much else that a court does, is done with retroactive force, why draw the line here? The answer is, I think, that the line is drawn here, because the injustice and oppression of a refusal to draw it would be so great as to be intolerable. We will not help out the man who has
- ↑ Harris v. Jex, 55 N. Y. 421; Gelpcke v. Dubuque, I Wall. 125; Holmes, J., in Kuhn v. Fairmount Coal Co., 215 U. S. 349, 371; 29 Harvard L. R. 80, 103; Danchey Co. v. Farmy, 105 Misc. 470; Freeman, "Retroactive Operation of Decisions," 18 Columbia L. R. p. 230; Gray, supra, secs. 547, 548; Carpenter, "Court Decisions and the Common Law," 17 Columbia L. R. 593.
