BAKER v. CARR. 186 Opinion of the Court. recover depended upon which of the two groups was entitled to such recognition; but the lower court's refusal to receive evidence or hear argument on that issue, its charge to the jury that the earlier established or "charter" government was lawful, and the verdict for the defendants, were affirmed upon appeal to this Court. Chief Justice Taney's opinion for the Court reasoned as follows: (I) If a court were to hold the defendants' acts unjustified because the charter government had no legal existence during the period in question, it would follow that all of that government's actions--laws enacted, taxes collected, salaries paid, accounts settled, sentences passed-were of no effect; and that "the officers who carried their decisions into operation [were] answerable as trespassers, if not in some cases as criminals.""4 There was, of course, no room for application of any doctrine of de facto status to uphold prior acts of an officer not authorized de jure, for such would have defeated the plaintiff's very action. A decision for the plaintiff would inevitably have produced some significant measure of chaos, a consequence to be avoided if it could be done without abnegation of the judicial duty to uphold the Constitution. (2) No state court had recognized as a judicial responsibility settlement of the issue of the locus of state governmental authority. Indeed, the courts of Rhode Island had in several cases held that "it rested with the political power to decide whether the charter government had been displaced or not," and that that department had acknowledged no change. denied because, the federal courts then lacked authority to issue habeas for a prisoner held under a state court sentence. Ex parte Dorr, 3 How. 103. 46 7 How., at 39.