Duncan v. Missouri

Citations

• 152 U.S. 377
• 14 S. Ct. 570
• 38 L. Ed. 485
• 1894 U.S. LEXIS 2127

Syllabus

<p>The privileges andMmmunities of citizens of the United States, protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, aré privileges and immunities arising out of the nature and essential character of the Federal government, and granted or secured by the Constitution.</p> <p>Due process of law, and the equal protection of the laws are secured if the laws operate on all alike, and do not subject the individual to an arbitrary exercise of the powers of government.</p> <p>An ex post facto law is one which imposes a punishment for an act which was not punishable at the time it was committed; or an additional punishment to that then prescribed; or changes the rules of evidence by which less or different testimony is sufficient to convict than-was then required; or, in short, in relation to the offence or its consequences, alters the situation of a party to his disadvantage.</p> <p>The prescribing of different modes of procedure, and the abolition of courts and creation of new ones, leaving untouched all the substantial protections with which the existing law surrounds the person accused of crime are not considered within the constitutional prohibition.</p> <p>To give this court jurisdiction over a judgment of the highest court of a State, the title, right, privilege, or immunity relied on must be specially set up or claimed at the proper time and in the proper way, and the decision must be against it; whereas, in this case, the question was not suggested until after judgment, and after an application for rehearing had been overruled, and only then in the form of a motion to transfer the cause.</p>