Decision of The Court
| This section requires expansion. |
In each case the United States Supreme Court held, by a closely divided 5:4 majority, a part, but not the whole, of the respective State statute to be unconstitutional. A federal constitutional principle known as "standing" precludes the giving of an advisory opinion, i.e., a pronouncement of a decision concerning a matter which goes beyond the facts and record of the particular case. Thus, parts of the respective statutes not implicated by the specific facts of the case are not supposed to be ruled upon until a case involving a contest over such matters is actually presented to the court.
In Smith vs. Turner that portion of the New York statute concerning the collection of a tax measured by the number of steerage-class passengers from ships arriving from a foreign port was declared unconstitutional.
In Norris vs. City of Boston that portion of the Massachusetts law imposing a tax measured by the number of alien passengers allowed to disembark without bond was struck down as unconstitutional.
Read more about this topic: Passenger Cases
Famous quotes containing the words decision of, decision and/or court:
“The impulse to perfection cannot exist where the definition of perfection is the arbitrary decision of authority. That which is born in loneliness and from the heart cannot be defended against the judgment of a committee of sycophants. The volatile essences which make literature cannot survive the clichés of a long series of story conferences.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“I know my fate. One day my name will be tied to the memory of something monstrous—a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision invoked against everything that had previously been believed, demanded, sanctified. I am no man, I am dynamite!”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can’t go at dawn and not many places he can’t go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking—one sport you shouldn’t have to reserve a time and a court for.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)