Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/441

Harvard Law Review. Published monthly, during; the Academic Year, by Harvard Law Student*. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE. $2.50 PER ANNUM 35 CENTS PER NUMBER. Editorial Board. John G. Palfrey, Editor-in-Chief. Wirt Howe, Treasurer. William W. Moss, Eugene H. Angert, Charles O. Parish, Joseph P. Cotton, Jr., • Sanford Robinson, Edward W. Fox, Dean Sage, Jr., Roy C. Gasser, Graham Sumner, George B. Hatch, Joseph Warren, Augustine L. Humes, Beekman Winthrop, Arthur W. Machen, Jr., Bruce Wyman. Another Virginia Coupon Case. — The case of McCullough v. Vir- ginia, 19 Sup. Ct. Rep. 134, decided last month by the Supreme Court of the United States, is an addition to the law touching the length to which the court may go in reviewing the decision of a State court when there is a question of impairment of contract. It is the last of that large family of cases given birth to by the Virginia coupon legislation of 1871, at the time of the refunding of the debt of that State. New bonds were issued, the State contracting that the coupons annexed should be receivable for all taxes. For twenty-seven years this legislation has been upheld, except as to one sort of tax, which under the Constitution of Virginia was pay- able only in specie. But during all that time the legislature has done its best to impair the State's agreement. A statute was passed in 1887 pro- viding that only gold, silver, United States treasury notes, and national bank notes, were receivable for taxes; and by virtue of this statute the present plaintiff was refused relief when he took the proper steps to ob- tain credit, in payment of taxes, for the coupons which he held. The highest court of the State held the entire coupon agreement unconstitu- tional, the whole vitiated by the part which was formerly held invalid. It was urged that the Supreme Court could not review this decision; but the court has taken the other view, reversed the judgment of the Virginia court, held the funding contract valid, and decided that it is impaired by the later statute. The decision is noteworthy by reason of the subtlety of the argument which it discountenances. That argument, embodied in the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Peckham, insisted, soundly enough, that the court could not review a decision which did not give effect to the statute which was thought to impair the contract. But no statute, he said, was given effect to by the Virginia decision; the contract in regard to coupons was held void, and the law was left as it was before, regardless of statute; coupons were simply held not receivable for taxes, and the judgment made no mention of the later statute. Strange to say, the facts of pre- vious cases give countenance to the idea that the literal decision cannot be looked beyond. The court has always claimed the right, it is true, to