The Federal Reporter. Volume 55 Cases Argued and Determined in the Circuit Courts of Appeals and Circuit and District Courts of the United States. May-July, 1893. Page: 33
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IN RE LYMAN.
posed was necessary or unnecessary; whether Mr. Sharpe was enti-
tled to a room at all; or if entitled, why he was ejected from the
room he formerly occupied; or whether the supervising inspector,
for whose benefit Mr. Sharpe was ejected, and who was installed in
Mr. Sharpe's former room, has any legal right there; or whether
there are not other rooms in the building occupied by persons having
no lawful right in them, which might be appropriated to Mr. Sharpe,
leaving this court unmolested. All these matters, it is claimed, are
subject to the determination of the treasury department alone, and
not subject to question or review elsewhere.
As the power over the occupation is claimed to be discretionary,
so, it is said, there was no need of any prior notice or hearing to be
given to the occupant. There was none given in this case. There
was no prior inquiry or consultation of the court, or of the clerk, as
to their need of the room, or of the practicability of parting with it.
The first notice was in effect a notice to quit. Even a right to ad-
dress the treasury department directly on the subject, is denied.)
That is allowable, it is said, through the attorney general alone,
whose remonstrances, however, have no force except such as the
treasury department may choose to give them; that is, in this case,
none at all.
The power claimed is exclusive in its nature, and arbitrary and
despotic in practice. If valid, the tenure of the United States courts
and of the post-office department in the building which the gov-
ernment has built expressly for them and for no other uses, is
inferior to that of any other class of tenants known to the law.
The most summary of civil proceedings to dispossess the humblest
tenant at will, provides for at least some notice, some hearing,
and some rule of law that regulates dispossession. Even military
discipline has courts-martial. It is only appointees, agents or serv-
ants, who have no tenure at all, that are liable to removal at dis-
cretion and without notice. Is that the relation of the United
States courts and the post office to the treasury department, as
respects their occupation of the building expressly built by the
government for them alone? Do they hold possession at the mere
discretion of the treasury department, and without any permanent
tenure?
If the different courts can be ousted from one room or another
at discretion without notice and without appeal, it is plain they
have no fixity of tenure, nor any tenure at all, save by the mere
grace of the treasury department. So far as respects any legal
guaranty of protection in their occupation, they might be turned
out of room after room, under pretext of the public needs, ac-
cording to the views entertained by the treasury department, or
by the subordinate who might wield its powers, until their func-
tions were crippled or paralyzed. Such a dominating power over
the court, lodged in an executive officer merely, would not only
be novel and extraordinary, but a standing menace to the inde-
pendence of the judiciary, and involve a violation of one of the
fundamental principles of the distribution of the powers of the
three great departments.
v.55r.no. 1-3
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The Federal Reporter. Volume 55 Cases Argued and Determined in the Circuit Courts of Appeals and Circuit and District Courts of the United States. May-July, 1893., legislative document, 1893; Saint Paul, Minnesota. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc36382/m1/48/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.