Taylor and Marshall v. Beckham

Syllabus

<p>By the constitution and laws of Kentucky, the determination of contests of the election of Governor and Lieutenant Governor is, and for a hundred years has been, committed to the General Assembly of that Commonwealth.</p> <p>The Court of Appeals of Kentucky decided that the courts had no power to go behind the determination of the General Assembly in such a contest, duly recorded in the journals thereof; that the office of Governor or of Lieutenant Governor was not property in itself; and, moreover, that, under the constitution and laws of Kentucky, such determination being an authorized mode of ascertaining the result of an election for Governor and Lieutenant Governor, the persons declared elected to those offices on the face of the returns by the Board of Canvassers, only provisionally occupied them because subject to the final determination of the General Assembly on contests duly initiated. JHeld:</p> <p>(1) That the judgment of the Court of Appeals to the effect that it was not empowered to revise the determination by the General Assembly adverse to plaintiffs in error in the matter of election to these offices was not a decision against a title, right, privilege or immunity secured by the Constitution of the United States; and plain-' tiffs in error could not invoke jurisdiction because of deprivation, under the circumstances, of property or vested rights, without due process of law;</p> <p>(2) That the guarantee byjblieJFederal-Constitution to_each of the States of a republican form of government was intrusted for its enforcement to the political department, and couid not be availed of, in connection with the Fourteenth Amendment, to give this court jurisdiction to revise the judgment of the highest co.urt of the State that it could not review the .determination-of-a-contested election of Governor and Lieutenant Governor by the tribunal to which that determination was exclusively committed by the state constitution and laws, on the ground of deprivation o