UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT DECISIONS ON-LINE

STOEHR V. WALLACE, 255 U. S. 239 (1921)

255 U. S. 239

U.S. Supreme Court

Stoehr v. Wallace, 255 U.S. 239 (1921)

Stoehr v. Wallace

No. 546

Argued January 4, 5, 1921

Decided February 28, 1921

255 U.S. 239

APPEAL FROM THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK

1. The Trading With the Enemy Act, originally and as amended, is strictly a war measure, and finds its sanction in the provision empowering Congress "to declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water." Const. Art. I, § 8, cl. 11. P. 255 U. S. 241.

2. Under § 7c of the act, as qualified by § 5, the power vested in the President to determine enemy ownership, precedent to a seizure of property, may be delegated by him to the Alien Property Custodian, whose determination then becomes in effect the act of the President. P. 255 U. S. 244.

3. The provision made for ex parte executive seizure, without prior judicial determination of enemy ownership, does not violate the rights of the owner, if a citizen, under the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, since ample provision is also made whereby any claimant who is neither an enemy nor an ally of an enemy may establish his right in a court of equity and compel a return of the property if wrongly sequestered. P. 255 U. S. 245.


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