Block v. Hirsh , 41 S. Ct. 458 ( 1921 )

Me. Justice Holmes

delivered the opinion of the court.

This is a proceeding brought by the defendant in error,. Hirsh, to recover possession of the cellar and first floor of a building on F Street in Washington which the plaintiff in error, Block, holds over after the expiration of a lease to him. Hirsh bought the building while the lease was running, and on December 15, 1919, notified Block that he should require possession on December 31, when the lease expired. Block declined to surrender the premises, relying upon the Act of October 22, 1919, c. 80, Title II — “District of Columbia Rents”; especially § 109, 41 Stat. 297, 298, 301. That is also the ground of his defence in this Court, and the question is whether the statute is constitutional, or, as held by the Court of Appeals, an attempt to authorize the taking of property not for public use and without due process of law, and for this and other reasons void.

By § 109 of the act the right of a tenant to occupy any hotel, apartment, or “rental property,” i. e., any building or part thereof, other than hotel or apartment, (§ 101), is to continue notwithstanding the expiration of his term, at the option of the tenant, subject to regulation by the Commission appointed by the act, so long as he pays the rent and performs the conditions as fixed by the lease or as modified by the Commission. It is provided in the same, section that the owner shall have the right to possession “for actual and bona fide occupancy by himself, or his wife, children, or dependents . . . upon giving thirty days’ notice in writing.” According to his affidavit Hirsh wanted the premises for his own use, but he did not see fit to give the thirty days ’ notice because he denied the validity of the act. Tlie statute embodies a scheme or code which it is needless to set forth, but it should be stated that it ends with the declaration in § 122 that the provisions of Title II are made necessary by emergencies-growing out of the war; resulting in rental conditions in the District dangerous to the public health and burdensome to public officers, employees and accessories, and thereby embarrassing the Federal Government in the transaction of the public business.- As emergency legislation the Title is to end in two years unless sooner repealed.

No doubt it is true that a legislative declaration of facts that are material only as the ground for enacting a rule of law, for instance, that a certain use is a public one, may not be held conclusive by the Courts. Shoemaker v. United States, 147 U. S. 282, 298. Hairston v. Danville & Western Ry. Co., 208 U. S. 598, 606. Prentis v. Atlantic Coast Line Co., 211 U. S. 210, 227. Producers Transportation Co. v. Railroad Commission, 251 U. S. 228, 230. But a declaration by a legislature concerning public conditions that by necessity and duty it must know, is entitled at least to great respect. In this instance Congress stated a publicly notorious and almost world-wide fact. That the emergency declared by the statute did exist must be assumed, and the question is whether Congress was incompetent to meet it in the way in which it has been met by most of the civilized countries of the world.

The general proposition to be maintained is that circumstances have clothed the letting of buildings in the District of Columbia with a public interest so great as to justify regulation by law. Plainly circumstances may so change in time or so differ in space as to clothe with such an interest what at other times or in other places would be a matter of purely private concern. It is enough to refer to the decisions as to insurance, in German Alliance Insurance Co. v. Lewis, 233 U. S. 389; irrigation, in Clark v. Nash, 198 U. S. 361; and mining, in Strickley v. Highland Boy Gold Mining Co., 200 U. S. 527. They sufficiently illustrate what hardly would be denied. They illustrate also that the use by the public generally of each specific thing affected cannot be made the test of public interest, Mt. Vernon-Woodberry Cotton Duck Co. v. Alabama Interstate Power Co., 240 U. S. 30, 32, and that the public interest may extend to the use of land. They dispel the notion that what in its immediate aspect may be only a private transaction may not be raised by its class or character to a public affair. See also Noble State Bank v. Haskell, 219 U. S. 104, 110, 111.

The fact that tangible property is also visible tends to give a rigidity to our conception of our rights in it that we do not attach to others less concretely clothed. But the notion that the former are exempt from the legislative modification required from time to time in civilized life is contradicted not only by the doctrine of eminent domain, under which what is taken is paid for, but by that of the police power in its proper sense, under which property rights may be cut down, and to that extent taken, without pay. Under the police power the right to erect buildings in a certain quarter of a city may be limited to from eighty to one hundred feet. Welch v. Swasey, 214 U. S. 91. Safe pillars may be required in coal mines. Plymouth Coal Co. v. Pennsylvania, 232 U. S. 531. Billboards in cities may be regulated. St. Louis Poster Advertising Co. v. St. Louis, 249 U. S. 269. Watersheds in the country may be kept clear. Perley v. North Carolina, 249 U. S. 510. These cases are enough to establish that a public exigency will justify the legislature in restricting property rights in land to a certain extent without compensation. But if to answer one need the legislature may limit height to answer another it may limit rent. We do not perceive any reason for denying the justification held good in the foregoing cases to a law limiting the property rights now in question if the public exigency requires that. The reasons are of á different nature but they certainly are not less pressing. Congress has stated the unquestionable- embarrassment of Government and danger to the public health in the existing condition of things. The space in Washington is necessarily monopolized in comparatively few hands, and letting portions of it is as much a business as any other. Housing is a necessary of life. All the elements of a public interest justifying some degree of public control are present. The only matter that seems to us open to debate is whether the statute goes too far. For just as there comes a point at which the police power ceases and leaves only that of eminent domain, it may be conceded that regulations of the present sort pressed to a certain height might amount to a taking without due process of law. Martin v. District of Columbia, 205 U. S. 135, 139.

Perhaps it would be too strict to deal with this case as concerning only the requirement of thirty days’ notice. For although the plaintiff alleged that he wanted the premises for his. own use the defendant denied it and might have prevailed upon that issue under the act. The general question to which we have adverted must be decided, if not in this then in the next case, and it should be disposed of now. — The main point against the law is that tenants are allowed to remain in possession at the same rent that they have been paying, unless modified by the Commission established by the act; and that thus the use of the land and the right of the owner to do what he will with his own and to make what contracts he pleased are cut down. But if the public interest be established the regulation of rates is one of the first forms in which it is asserted, and the validity of such regulation has been settled since Munn v. Illinois, 94 U. S. 113. It is said that a grain elevator may go out of business whereas here the use is fastened upon the land. The power to go out . of business, when it exists, is an illusory answer to gas-companies and waterworks, but we need not stop at that. The regulation is put and justified only as a temporary measure. See Wilson v. New, 243 U. S. 332, 345, 346. Fort Smith & Western R. R. Co. v. Mills, 253 U. S. 206. A limit in time, to tide over a passing trouble, well may justify' a law. that could not be upheld as a permanent change.

Machinery is provided to secure to the landlord a reasonable rent. § 106. It may be assumed- that the interpretation of “reasonable” will deprive him in part at least of the power of profiting by the sudden influx of people to Washington caused by the needs of Government and the war, and thus of a right usually incident to fortunately situated property — of a part of the value of his property as defined in International Harvester Co. v. Kentucky, 234 U. S. 222. Southern Ry. Co. v. Greene, 216 U. S. 400, 414. But while it is unjust to pursue such profits from a national misfortune with sweeping denunciations,' the policy of restricting them has been embodied in taxation and is accepted. It goes little if at all farther than the restriction put upon the rights of the owner of money by the more debatable usury laws. The preference given to the tenant in possession is an almost necessary incident of the policy and is traditional in English law. If the tenant remained subject to the landlord’s power to evict, the attempt to limit the landlord’s demands would fail.

Assuming that the end in view otherwise justified the means adopted by Congress, we have no concern of course with the question whether those means were the wisest, whether they may not cost more than they come to, or will' effect, the tesult desired. It is enough that we are not warranted in saying that legislation that has been resorted to for the same purpose all over the world, is futile or has no reasonable relation to the relief sought. Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R. R. Co. v. McGuire, 219 U. S. 549, 569.

The statute is objected to on the further ground that landlords and tenants are deprived by it of a trial by jury on the right to possession of the land. If the power of the Commission established by the statute to regulate the relation is established* as we think it is, by what we have said, this objection amounts to little. To regulate the relation and to decide the facts affecting it are hardly separable. While the act is in force there is little to decide except whether the rent allowed is reasonable, and upon that question the courts are given the last word. A part of the exigency is to secure a speedy and summary administration of the law and we are not prepared to say that the suspension of ordinary remedies was not a reasonable pro-= vision of a statute reasonable in its aim and intent. The plaintiff obtained a judgment on the ground that the Statute was void, root and branch. That judgment must be reversed.

Judgment reversed.

Me. Justice McKenna* with¹ whom concurred The . Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Van Devanter and Mr. Justice McReynolds, dissenting: