U.S. Supreme Court MANEY v. U. S., 278 U.S. 17 (1928)

[Page 278 U.S. 17, 23]

States v. Ness, supra, and that a hearing in chambers adjoining the courtroom does not satisfy the requirement of a hearing in open Court, United States v. Ginsberg, , 37 S. Ct. 422. The reasoning that prevailed in those cases must govern this. A hearing in less than ninety days from the public notice required by section 6 (Code, 396) surely would have been as bad as a hearing in chambers. But as it has been decided that no valid decree could be made until the certificate was filed and as the hearing took place and the decree was entered in less than ninety days from the time when the certificate was received the want of power seems to us doubly plain. If after the certificate came the petition had been refiled, a new notice had been given and ninety days had been allowed to elapse before the hearing there would be a different case.

It is said that the District Court had control of procedural matters and could cure formal defects. Very likely it had power to cure defective allegations but it had not power to supply facts. If, as we decide, the petitioner was required to file the Department of Labor's certificate at the same time that she filed her petition, the District Court could not cure her failure to do so and enlarge its own powers by embodying in an order a fiction that the certificate was filed in time.

As the certificate of citizenship was illegally obtained, the express words of section 15 authorize this proceeding to have it cancelled. The judgment attacked did not make the matter res judicata, as against the statutory provision for review. The difference between this and ordinary cases already has been pointed and would be enough to warrant a special treatment. But it hardly can be called special treatment to say that a record that discloses on its face that the judgment transcends the power of the judge may be declared void in the interest of the sovereign who gave to the judge whatever power he had.

Judgment affirmed.