Webb v. O'BRIEN

Citations

• 263 U.S. 313
• 44 S. Ct. 112
• 68 L. Ed. 318
• 1923 U.S. LEXIS 2745

Syllabus

<p>1. A citizen can have no legal right to enter into a contract involving ■land with an alien who cannot legally make and carry -out the contract. JP. 321.</p> <p>2. In the absence of a treaty to the contrary, a State has power to deny aliens the right to own land within, its borders. P. 322.</p> <p>3. A cropping contract between an owner of land in California and a Japanese alien, which, though it may not amount to a lease or a transfer of an interest in real property, is more than a contract of employment in that it gives the alien a right to use, and have a share in the benefit of, the land for agricultural purposes, exceeds the privileges .granted to such aliens by Art. I of the treaty of February 21, 1911, 37 Stat. 1504, between the United States and Japan, and is forbidden by the California Alien Land Law, which denies to aliens ineligible to citizenship permission to have or enjoy any privilege, not prescribed in the treaty, fin respect to the use or the benefit of land for agricultural purposes. P. 322.</p> <p>4. In forbidding such contracts, the state law violates no right of the landowner or the alien under the Federal Constitution. P. 324. See Terrace v. Thompson, ante, 197; Porterfield v. Webb, ante, ' '225. Truax v. Raich, 239 U. S- 33, distinguished.</p>