Delegations of Authority - 1905

Delegations of Authority - 1905 Supreme Court Case

DALLEMAGNE v. MOISAN, 197 U.S. 169 (1905) at:

This 1905 Supreme Court case addressed the claim of a French citizen, a crewmember on a French ship, who was imprisoned by the San Francisco, California police pursuant to a request from the French consul general, due to his "insubordinate conduct" on board the ship. The French citizen claimed his arrest was illegal.

A) What did the Court find?

B) What were the relevant statutory provisions?

C) the detention was facilitated without judicial approval. Why would this be an appropriate delegation of authority?

D) What authority might a local police officer have in 2006 to detain a foreign national on board a ship or an airplane?

Answer Question 1: The district court found that since the ship had left the port the detention of the defendant was no longer in order and, therefore, order the defendant's discharge from custody. That order was stayed one day, though there was no stated reason as to why such a stay was ordered.

The Supreme Court found that the district court had erred in their ordering of the discharge of the prisoner. The court also found that the arrest of the seaman was unauthorized but that when "the defendant was brought before the district court of the United States upon a writ of habeas corpus" and that when the judge had heard the case immediately thereafter, that the court had legal justification to hold the prisoner, but only for a two-month time frame. It further found that the departure of the ship from the port of San Francisco had no bearing whatsoever on the case, because the legal provisions made no statements at all concerning whether the ship departed from the port or not.

The relevant statutory provisions quoted by the court included an act of Congress, approved June 11, 1864 (13 Stat. At L. 121, Chapter 116) which the court stated made the arrest an unauthorized event. They also quoted the same statute to justify the arrest after the defendant had been brought before the court, which thereby nullified the fact that the arrest was made by an unauthorized individual.

A case also cited in this case was; Prigg v. Pennsywania, 16 Pet. 539, 622, 10 L. ed. 1060, 1091; Robertson v. Baldwin, 165 U.S. 275, 41 L. ed. 715, 17 Sup. Ct. Rep. 326 which allowed for the authority needed in regards to a foreign individual being arrested and held in the United States.

Another statute cited by the Supreme Court was a substantiation of the court's earlier citing which was the Revised Statutes of the United States, as 4079, 4080, 4081. (See also U.S. Comp Stat 1901, p 2766. By citing this substantiation the court said that the authority to enter into treaties by the United States with foreign countries. The court also cited Revised Statute 4081 in regards to an imprisonment of a foreign prisoner under sentence of a court that such a prisoner might be lawfully committed.

In a separate, but related citation, the court found that according to 197 U.S. 169, 176 the court was mentioned in the statute as one of the authorities to issue warrants for the arrest of the individual, and therefore the prisoners assertion that the arresting authority did not really have the authority to hold said prisoner, was an erroneous assertion.