A Selection of Cases on Constitutional Law; Some Provisions Protecting the Individual Against the State or the Nation Volume 2 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 edition. Excerpt: ...from imprisonment, and it is that and that only of which Tweedle complains. Statutes that are constitutional in part only will be upheld, so far as they are not in conflict with the Constitution, provided the allowed and the prohibited parts are severable. (Packet Company v. Keokuk, 95 U. S. 80.) So that if so much of the section under consideration as relieves a debtor from imprisonment for debt is constitutional and can be severed from the other parts of the enactment, the judgment of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island should be affirmed. That part of the section which relates to the imprisonment of the debtor, and that which relates to the seizure of his property, are entirely distinct and independent, and either one can stand and be operative, though the other should be declared void. We may, then, in deciding this case, consider sect. 1 as if it read: " No person shall hereafter be imprisoned, or be continued in prison, ... upon an execution issued upon a judgment obtained against a corporation of which such person is or was a stockholder." The only question, therefore, which we are called on to decide is whether this provision, enacted after the recovery of the judgment against the corporation, by virtue of which the defendant hi error was imprisoned, is a law which impairs the obligation of contracts. In other words, Can a state legislature pass a law abolishing imprisonment for debt on contracts made or j udgments rendered when imprisonment of the debtor was one of the remedies to which his creditor was by law entitled to resort? This court has repeatedly and pointedly answered this question in the affirmative.... In Sturges v. Crowninshield (4 Wheat, 122) this court, speaking by Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, said: " The distinction between...