Opinion of the Court.

makes that which has always been due process of law efficient by removing objections and obstructions to its operation. It simply declares that a judgment for a wrong or tort, which in itself was erroneous, is a voidable judgment, and may be avoided, if it can be brought within the due processes of the law already existing, and shall by this means be inquired into, and if it is against right, justice and law, shall be no longer in force, and the judgment plaintiff shall be forever enjoined from putting it into execution.

Prior to the adoption of the 14th Amendment the power to provide such remedies, although they may have interfered with what were called vested rights, seems to have been fully conceded. The cases in which this had been decided in this court are Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall. 386; Satterlee v. Matthewson, 2 Pet. 380; Sampeyreac v. United States, 7 Pet. 222; Watson v. Mercer, 8 Pet. 88; and Freeborn v. Smith, 2 Wall. 160. In the latter case, Mr. Justice Grier, when the Congress of the United States had allowed an appeal where the judgment would have otherwise been final, used this language: "If the judgment below was erroneous, the plaintiff in error had a moral right at least to have it set aside, and the defendant is only claiming a vested right in a wrong judgment." And he thus quotes the language of Chief Justice Parker, in Foster v. Essex Bank, 16 Mass. 245: "The truth is there is no such thing as a vested right to do wrong; and a legislature, which, in its acts not expressly authorized by the constitution, limits itself to correcting mistakes, and to providing remedies for the furtherance of justice, cannot be charged with violating its duty, or exceeding its authority."

Many other cases might be cited in which it was held that retrospective statutes, when not of a criminal character, though affecting the rights of parties in existence, are not forbidden by the Constitution of the United States.

We do not think that the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, which seems to have carefully considered the question of due process of law in the case of Peerce v. Kitzmiller, and held that the statute of the State in carrying out the provisions of the constitution did not provide due

Dissenting Opinion: Harlan, J.

process of law, was in error when it also held that the remedy provided by the constitution of the State as carried out by the ancient proceeding of a bill in a court of equity, was not void for want of due process of law, nor in conflict with the Constitution of the United States.

Its judgment is therefore

MR. JUSTICE HARLAN dissenting.

Affirmed.

In Ford v. Surget, 97 U. S. 574, 605, this court, speaking by the writer of this opinion, said that to the Confederate army was "conceded, in the interest of humanity, and to prevent the cruelties of reprisals and retaliation, such belligerent rights as belonged under the laws of nations to the armies of independent governments engaged in war against each otherthat concession placing the soldiers and officers of the rebel army, as to all matters directly connected with the mode of prosecuting the war, ' on the footing of those engaged in lawful war,' and exempting 'them from liability for acts of legitimate warfare.'" It necessarily results from this doctrine, without reference to the provision of the Constitution of West Virginia, that Williams was not civilly responsible for the value of the cattle in question, if, at the time he took them, he was regularly enlisted as a soldier in the Confederate army, and if his taking of them was consistent with the usages of civilized warfare." If the taking was not an act of war, but a mere trespass, his being a soldier in the Confederate army would not have constituted a defence. But whether he was or was not a soldier in that army, and whether his act was or was not one of legitimate warfare, were questions determinable in the action of trespass instituted against him in the Circuit Court of Preston County. It is not disputed that it was open to him, in that action, to prove every fact relied upon in the present suit as establishing immunity from civil responsibility for the taking of Freeland's cattle. There was a verdict and judgment against him, and that judgment, upon writ of error to the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, was affirmed in 1867. No writ of error was prosecuted to this court.

Dissenting Opinion: Harlan, J.

If the taking of the cattle was illegal, the right to recover from the wrongdoer their reasonable value was an absolute one, of which the owner could not be deprived by a legislative enactment of the State, or by an amendment of its constitution. The judgment obtained by Freeland was an adjudication that the taking was illegal. He acquired by that judgment a vested right to have and demand the amount named in it, as well as the benefit of such remedies as the law gave for the enforcement of personal judgments for money. The judgment was, therefore, property of which the State could not deprive him, except by due process of law. And a constitutional provision, subsequently enacted, declaring that the defendant's property should not be seized or sold under final process on such judgment, is not due process of law. I cannot agree that a State may, by an amendment of its fundamental law, prevent a citizen from recovering the value of property, of which, according to the final judgment of its own courts, he has been illegally deprived by a mere trespasser. That would be sheer spoliation under the forms of law. If the amendment in question had, in terms, given the defendant a right to a new trial of the action of trespass in the same court, after the time had passed within which, according to the settled modes of procedure, he could, of right, apply for a new trial, it would have accomplished, in respect to the judgment against him, precisely what, in effect, has been held in this case to be consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment.

The present case is unlike Louisiana v. Mayor of New Or leans, 109 U. S. 285, 290, where the court sustained the validity, so far as the Constitution of the United States was concerned, of a state enactment so changing the laws for raising money by municipal taxation as to prevent, for the time, the enforcement of a judgment obtained against the city of New Orleans, for damages done to private property by a mob. But, even in that case, the court was careful to say that the relator was not deprived of his judgment, or of the right of himself or assignee to use it as a set-off against any demands of the city. It is, also, said: "The question of the effect of legislation upon the means of enforcing an ordinary judgment for damages for

Dissenting Opinion: Harlan, J.

a tort rendered against the person committing it, in favor of the person injured, may involve other considerations, and is not presented by the case before us." The radical difference between that and the present case is, that the right to sue the city of New Orleans for damages on account of private property destroyed by a mob was given by statute; whereas, the right to claim compensation from a wrongdoer for his illegal conversion of private property to his own use is inherent in the owner, and cannot be taken from him by the State.

Nor, in my opinion, is the ruling in the present case sustained by Dow v. Johnson, 100 U. S. 158, 166. That was an action in the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Maine, upon a judgment rendered by default in 1863 against General Dow while he was in the active discharge, within the lines of military operations, of his duties as a brigadier-general in the army of the United States. The judgment was rendered in a court of the city and parish of New Orleans. That officer was sued in the latter court for the taking of certain personal property by soldiers under his command. He was served with process, but did not appear and make defence. "The condition of New Orleans," this court said, "and of the district connected with it, at the time of the seizure of the property of the plaintiff and the entry of judgment against Dow, was not that of a country restored to its normal relations to the Union, by the fact that they had been captured by our forces, and were held in subjection. The country was under martial law, and its armed occupation gave no jurisdiction to the civil tribunals over the officers and soldiers of the occupying They were not to be harassed and mulcted at the complaint of any person aggrieved by their action. The jurisdiction which the District Court was authorized to exercise over civil causes between parties, by the proclamation of General Butler, did not extend to cases against them. The third special plea alleges that the court was deprived by the general government of all jurisdiction except such as was conferred by the commanding general, and that no jurisdiction over persons in the military service for acts performed in the line of their duty was ever thus conferred upon it. It was not for their

army.

Dissenting Opinion: Harlan, J.

control in any way, or the settlement of complaints against them, that the court was allowed to continue in existence. It was, as already stated, for the protection and benefit of the inhabitants of the conquered country and others there not engaged in the military service." General Dow, when thus sued in a local tribunal, existing by military sufferance in a country governed by martial law, was not bound, as this court said, to leave his troops and attend upon that tribunal, for the purpose of justifying his military orders, by showing that the acts complained of were authorized by the necessities of war. It was consequently held that the New Orleans court was without jurisdiction to proceed against him. There is no analogy between that case and the present one; for, the action of trespass against Williams was brought in a Superior Court of general jurisdiction, after the war closed, and when he was at liberty to appear and make defence. And it was determined by a court whose existence was independent of military authority. The only possible ground upon which the judgment below can be sustained, consistently with the law of the land, is to hold that no court of any State had jurisdiction, in the year 1867, even with the parties before it, to inquire, in an action of trespass, whether an alleged taking of the private property of a citizen was a mere trespass, or was an act of war upon the part of the defendant, a Confederate soldier, and to give judgment according to the result of that inquiry.

But as the primary object in creating judicial tribunals is to provide a mode for the determination of controversies between individuals, and between individuals and the government, can it be said that no court had jurisdiction to inquire whether Freeland's cattle were taken by Williams without authority of law? Was the mere averment that the latter was a Confederate soldier, and that what he did was an act of war, sufficient to preclude all investigation as to the truth of that averment? If not, how was such an investigation to be had. in any effective mode, except in a court of justice? It is suggested that when the Preston Circuit Court ascertained that the taking of these cattle was legitimate warfare upon the part of Williams as a Confederate soldier, it ought to have dis