But the complaints against the courts are not all because of their holding statutes unconstitutional. Many have felt that courts sometimes erred in having too much respect for the legislative power and because of that respect have allowed constitutional rights and liberties to be sacrificed at the behest of majorities and often at the behest of active, interested minorities more insistent than the inert majority. The decision of the United States Supreme Court in the _Charles River Bridge_ case, 11 _Peters_ 420, was mourned by such men as Webster, Kent, Story, and others as breaking down the safeguards of the constitution. The decision in the _Slaughter House_ cases was regarded by many able jurists as ignoring that provision of the XIVth amendment to the Federal Constitution forbidding any denial to any one of the equal protection of the laws. The _Elevator_ cases, holding that elevators were public utilities and therefore subject to public control as to charges for service, though the owners had no special franchise, no part of public power, are even now thought to have made a wide breach in the constitutional barriers against the invasion of private rights. The decision in the _Chinese Deportation_ cases, 149 U. S. 698, shocked the sense of justice of many. It was to the effect that Congress could empower the executive to arrest upon its own warrant any person it claimed to be an alien unlawfully residing in the United States and to deport him without trial, unless he could affirmatively prove to the satisfaction of a single judge (to be selected by the executive), and by a specified kind of evidence only, that he was not guilty, however ample and probative other evidence might be adduced and however impossible to produce the specified evidence. Justices Fuller, Field, and Brewer vigorously dissented on the ground that such action by the executive, though under the authority of Congress, was in violation of the constitutional guaranties against arrest without judicial warrant, against deprivation of liberty without trial by jury and due process of law. Justice Brewer after quoting Madison, that banishment is among the severest of punishments, went on to say: "But punishment implies a trial. 'No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.' Due process of law requires that a man be heard before he is condemned, and both heard and condemned in the due and orderly procedure as recognized by the common law from time immemorial."