Chung Fook v. White

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Chung Fook v. White

Argued February 26, 1924
Decided April 7, 1924


Full case name:	Chung Fook v. Edward White, Commissioner of Immigration for the Port of San Francisco

Citations:	264 U.S. 443; 44 S.Ct. 361, 68 L.Ed. 781

Prior history:	287 F. 533 (9th Cir.), cert. granted, 262 U.S. 740 (1923).

Holding

Court membership

Chief Justice: William Howard Taft
Associate Justices: Joseph McKenna, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Willis Van Devanter, James Clark McReynolds, Louis Brandeis, George Sutherland, Pierce Butler, Edward Terry Sanford

Case opinions

Majority by: Sutherland
Joined by: Taft, McKenna, Holmes, Van Devanter, McReynolds, Brandeis, Butler, Sanford

Laws applied

Immigration Act of Feb. 5, 1917, ch. 29, § 22, 39 Stat. 891.

Chung Fook v. White, 264 U.S. 443 (1924), was an important Supreme Court case. It was significant in that it marked the end of the era of strict plain meaning interpretation of statutes and the beginning of the looser American Rule that the intent of the law was more important than its text.

A man did not have the automatic right to bring his wife to the United States if he married her after entering there; this is despite the exception's not being explicitly mentioned in the law.