Purchasable Offices in Ceded Territory

Extract

In the July number of the Journal is given the decision of the Court of Claims in Sanches v. The United States and of the Supreme Court in O’Reilly v. Brooke. Both cases involve the validity of the orders of military governors in former Spanish territory abolishing offices for which a price had been paid and which the holder claimed were private property and thus under the protection of the law of nations and the treaty of peace with Spain. In the Sanches case the office abolished was that of “ numbered procurador of the courts of first instance of the capital of Porto Rico;” in the O’Reilly case the office was that of high sheriff of Havana. In each case the opinion was expressed that the office had ceased with the extinction of Spanish sovereignty, but in the Supreme Court case this was not necessary to the decision, as General Brooke’s liability had already been denied on other grounds, while the opinion on this point was delivered without argument of counsel, without exposition, and without the citation of authority other than that of the Secretary of War in approving General Brooke’s order. It is the opinion of the writer that the holders of those offices were entitled to indemnification. The facts of the O’Reilly controversy will be gone into in considerable detail.