The respondents, subjects of Japan residing in California, presented for filing in the office of the secretary of state of California, one of the petitioners, proposed articles of incorporation of the 'Japanese Hospital of Los Angeles.' The articles provided for the creation of a business corporation with a share capital of $100,000. They purported to authorize the corporation to construct and operate in Los Angeles a general hospital with a home for nurses and resident physicians, and to lease land for that purpose.
Although the articies complied with all provisions of the California statutes governing the organization of a corporation for such purposes, the petitioners refused to file them on the ground that, as the respondents were citizens of Japan, the Alien Land Law of the state (St. 1921, p. lxxxiii) did not permit an incorporation by them for the purposes named. The respondents then brought, in the Supreme Court of California, a proceeding in mandamus to compel the petitioners to file the proposed articles and to issue a certificate of incorporation to the hospital. The mandamus petition set up that the treaty of commerce and navigation between the government of the United States and the empire of Japan, proclaimed April 5, 1911, 37 Stat. 1504, and now in force, conferred on citizens and subjects of the empire of Japan the right to incorporate in the United States for the purposes named in the proposed articles.
The state court granted the writ as prayed, basing its determination on the construction of the treaty. Tashiro v. Jordan, 201 Cal. 236, 256 P. 545, 53 A. L. R. 1279. This court granted the petition of the secretary of state of California for certiorari May 14, 1928. 277 U.S. 580, 48 S.C.t. 527, 72 L. Ed. 997.
Section 2 of the Alien Land Law of California, as amended by the Act of the Legislature approved June 20, 1923, Stats. 1923, p. 1020, provides that aliens of a class in which respondents are included may acquire, possess and enjoy real estate within the state 'in the manner and to the extent, and for the purposes prescribed by any treaty now existing between the government of the United States and the nation or country of which such alien is a citizen or subject, and not otherwise.' Section 3, in like terms, permits (a) acquisition of land by a corporation, the majority of whose stockholders are aliens; and (b) the purchase by aliens of stock in corporations owning or leasing land, only for purposes prescribed by such a treaty.
The statutes of California do not otherwise forbid the organizing of a corporation by citizens of Japan residing in the state, and by these enactments there was effected perfect harmony in the operation of the statute and of the treaty. What the treaty prescribes the statute authorizes. There is thus no possibility of conflict between the exercise of the treaty-making power of the federal government and the reserved powers of the state such as that suggested in Geofroy v. Riggs, 133 U.S. 258, 267, 10 S.C.t. 295, 33 L. Ed. 642, on which petitioners placed reliance on the argument.
The Supreme Court of California, in passing upon the application for mandamus, granted the relief prayed, not as a matter of statutory construction, but because it thought the conduct of a hospital by Japanese citizens through the instrumentality of a corporation, organized under the laws of the state, was a privilege secured to the respondents by the treaty which the state statute did not purport to withhold. The privilege challenged by petitioners is one specially set up or claimed under a treaty of the United States and sustained by the state court and the case is thus one within the jurisdiction of this court conferred by section 237(b) of the Judicial Code, 28 USCA § 344(b). Compare Red Cross Line v. Atlantic Fruit Co., 264 U.S. 109, 120, 44 S.C.t. 274, 68 L. Ed. 582.
The question presented is one of the construction of the treaty, the relevant portions of which are printed in the margin. It in terms authorizes the citizens of Japan to carry on trade within the United States and 'to lease land for residential and commercial purposes, and generally to do anything incident to or necessary for trade upon the same terms as native citizens or subjects, submitting themselves to the laws and regulations there established.'
