ICHONG
vs. HERNANDEZ
Facts:
This Court has before it the delicate
task of passing upon the validity and constitutionality of a legislative
enactment, fundamental and far‐reaching in
significance. The enactment poses questions of due process, police power and
equal protection of the laws. It also poses an important issue of fact, that is
whether the conditions which the disputed law purports to remedy really or
actually exist. Admittedly springing from a deep, militant, and positive
nationalistic impulse, the law purports to protect citizen and country from the
alien retailer. Through it, and within the field of economy it regulates,
Congress attempts to translate national aspirations for economic independence
and national security, rooted in the drive and urge for national survival and
welfare, into a concrete and tangible measures designed to free the national
retailer from the competing dominance of the alien, so that the country and the
nation may be free from a supposed economic dependence and bondage. Do the
facts and circumstances justify the enactment?
Held:
It has been said the police power is so far ‐ reaching in
scope, that it has become almost impossible to limit its sweep. As it derives
its existence from the very existence of the State itself, it does not need to
be expressed or defined in its scope; it is said to be co‐extensive
with self‐protection
and survival, and as such it is the most positive and active of all
governmental processes, the most essential, insistent and illimitable.
Especially is it so under a modern democratic
framework where the demands of society and of nations have multiplied to almost
unimaginable proportions; the field
and scope of police power has become almost boundless, just as the fields of
public interest and public welfare have become almost all‐embracing and
have transcended human foresight. Otherwise stated, as we cannot foresee the
needs and demands of public interest and welfare in this constantly changing
and progressive world, so we cannot delimit beforehand the extent or scope of
police power by which and through which the State seeks to attain or achieve
interest or welfare. So it is that Constitutions do not define the scope or
extent of the police power of the State; what they do is to set forth the
limitations thereof. The most important of these are the due process clause and
the equal protection clause.
Resuming what we have set forth above
we hold that the disputed law was enacted to remedy a real actual threat and
danger to national economy posed by alien dominance and control of the retail
business and free citizens and country from dominance and control; that the
enactment clearly falls within the scope of the police power of the State, thru
which and by which it protects its own personality and insures its security and
future; that the law does not violate the equal protection clause of the
Constitution because sufficient grounds exist for the distinction between alien
and citizen in the exercise of the occupation regulated, nor the due process of
law clause, because the law is prospective in operation and recognizes the
privilege of aliens already engaged in the occupation and reasonably protects
their privilege; that the wisdom and efficacy of the law to carry out its
objectives appear to us to be plainly evident — as a matter of fact it seems
not only appropriate but actually necessary — and that in any case such matter
falls within the prerogative of the Legislature, with whose power and
discretion the Judicial department of the Government may not interfere; that
the provisions of the law are clearly embraced in the title, and this suffers
from no duplicity and has not misled the legislators or the segment of the
population affected; and that it cannot be said to be void for supposed
conflict with treaty obligations because no treaty has actually been entered
into on the subject and the police power may not be curtailed or surrendered by
any treaty or any other conventional agreement.