Régime des chambres de commerce

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 834582015

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-77707

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Régime des chambres de commerce

Place of publication:: Paris

Publisher:: Libr.-impr. réunies

Year of publication:: 1894

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (390 S)

Collection:: Economics Books

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STOCK DIVIDENDS ra 39 expressed.’ In terse, comprehensive language befitting the Constitution, they empowered Congress ‘‘to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived.” They intended to include thereby everything which by reasonable understanding can fairly be regarded as income. That stock divi- dends representing profits are so regarded, not only by the plain people but by investors and financiers, and by most of the courts of the country, is shown beyond peradventure, by their acts and by their utterances. It seems to me clear, therefore, that. Congress possesses the power which it exercised to make dividends representing profits, taxable as income, whether the medium in which the dividend is paid be cash or stock, and that it may define, as it has done, what dividends representing profits shall be deemed income. It surely is not clear that the enactment exceeds the power granted by the sixteenth amendment. And, as this court has so often said, the high prerogative of declaring an act of Congress invalid, should never be exercised except in a clear case. “It is but a decent respect due to the wisdom, the integrity, and the patriotism of the legislative body, by which any law is passed, to presume in favor of its validity, until its violation of the Constitution is proved beyond all reasonable doubt.” (Ogden ». Saunders, 12 Wheat. 213, 270.) Mr. Justice Clarke concurs in this opinion. $ Compare Rugg, C.J., Tax Commissioner +. Putnam (227 Mass., 522, 524): “It is a grant from the sovereign people and not the exercise of a delegated power. It is a statement of general principles and not a specification of details. Amendments to such a charter of government ought to be construed in the same spirit and according to the same rules as the original. It isto be interpreted as the constitution of a State and not as a statute or an ordinary piece of legislation. Its words must be given a construction adapted to carry into effect its purpose.” 9 “Tf is our duty, when required in the regular course of judicial proceedings, to declare an act of Con- gress void if not within the legislative power of the United States: but this declaration should never be made greet in a clear case. Every possible presumption is in favor of the validity of a statute, and this continues until the contrary is shown beyond a rational doubt. One branch of the government can not encroach on the domain of another without danger. The safety of our institutions depends in no small degree on a strict observance of this salutary rule.” (Sinking-Fund Cases, 99 U. 8. 700, 718 (187%). See also log Tender Cases, 12 Wall. 457, 531 (1870); Trade-Mark Cases, 100 U. 8. 82, 96 (1879). See American Doctrine of Constitutional Law, by James B. Thayer, 7 Harvard Law Review, 129, 142.) “With the exception of the extraordinary decree rendered in the Dred Scott case, * * * gll of the acts or the portions of the acts of Congress invalidated by the courts before 1868 related to the organization of courts. Denying the power of Congress to makes notes legal tender seems to be the first departure from this rule.” (Haines, American Doctrine of Judicial Supremacy, p. 288.) The first legal tender decision was overruled in part two years later (1870) (Legal Tender Cases. 12 ‘Wall. 457); and again in 1883 (Legal Tender Case, 110 U. S. 421):

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