The American Judiciary

by Simeon E. Baldwin

RELATIONS BETWEEN THE COURTS OF DIFFERENT STATES

Every State has all the rights of an independent sovereign, except so far as its sovereignty is limited by the Constitution of the United States. As respects each other the States are for most purposes in the position of foreign governments. The courts of one are regarded by those of any other as foreign courts, except so far as the Constitution may have prescribed a different rule.

No legal process from a court can have any inherent force outside of the territorial boundaries of the government in which it is issued. The law of that government may attach certain consequences to the fact of its service in a foreign country, but it can do so only with reference to the effect of the proceeding on persons or property subject to its own jurisdiction. Courts, as a general rule, can act only when they have jurisdiction over the person, the subject-matter, and the cause.

In rare cases, jurisdiction over the subject-matter may be regarded as giving jurisdiction over the person, so far as may be necessary to uphold a judgment settling the possession or title to property. Such a proceeding is, either in form or substance, one not in personam but in rem. The commonest instance is a suit in admiralty to enforce a maritime lien, such as that given by the universal law of the sea for seamen's wages. Wherever the vessel is found, this lien is recognized and will be enforced by seizing and selling her, but only after some kind of public notice has been given to all who have any pecuniary interest in her to appear and be heard. In such a suit, personal notice to her owners, served within the jurisdiction of the government to the courts of which the seamen may resort, is not indispensable. The presence of the ship within the power of the court is enough.

While State courts have no admiralty jurisdiction, they can adjudicate upon a claim of title or right of possession to fixed property within the territorial limits of their State, although the parties adversely interested are not and have not been personally served with process there or anywhere. Here again their power over the property necessarily implies such power of control over those who might lay claim to it as will suffice to settle any dispute over its ownership or possession. But in all ordinary cases they are not only powerless to subject any one to obedience to their judgments who is not personally within the State in which they exist, but powerless so to subject one who is personally within it, but who did not belong there and was not there served with process in the original proceeding leading up to the judgment, unless he voluntarily took part in the proceeding.

In most civilized nations there is a recognized form of proceeding by which a judgment of a foreign court, fairly rendered after giving a proper opportunity to the defendant for a hearing, can be enforced by process from a domestic tribunal. This is styled making the foreign judgment executory. The English common law did not recognize such a right, and gave no remedy to one desiring to enforce a foreign judgment, except that of bringing a fresh suit. In like manner, whoever has recovered a judgment against an inhabitant of any State, in a court held outside of that State, can enforce it against him in his own State only by bringing a new action. This either is, or is in the nature of, the common law action of "debt on judgment"; and only two defenses are available. These are, first, that no such judgment exists or is in force; and, second, that if it exists, it was rendered by a court having no jurisdiction over the subject-matter or the defendant.[Footnote: Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U. S. Reports, 714; Grover & Baker Sewing Machine Co. v. Radcliffe, 137 U. S. Reports, 287.] If there was jurisdiction, it is of no consequence that it was erroneously or unfairly exercised. The remedy for that must be sought in the State where the judgment was pronounced. Even fraud on the part of the plaintiff in procuring it, though a defense against a judgment of a foreign country is not one against a judgment of another State.[Footnote: Christmas v. Russell, 5 Wallace's Reports, 290.] These rules are established by Art. IV, Sec. I of the Constitution of the United States and by Acts of Congress passed to enforce it.[Footnote: U. S. Revised Statutes, Sec. 905.]

Commercial intercourse between the different States is so great and so constant that questions in the courts of one often arise which turn on the law of another. Those who do any act do it with implied reference to the law of the place where it is done, so far as respects its legal consequences. If it is a wrongful act there, it will in most instances be deemed a wrongful act everywhere. If it leads to a certain result as regards property rights there, it will ordinarily give a right of action anywhere, to secure the benefit of that result.

The law of each State is largely an unwritten common law. Even in those where they have full codes defining civil rights, these codes are expressed in terms for the definitions of many of which the common law gives the rule. But this common law is not precisely the same in any two States. In minor points certainly, and perhaps in capital ones, there will be a divergence. In England there is one uniform common law. Here, divided as we are for most business purposes into forty-five different sovereignties, it is multiform.

If, then, the court of one State in determining the legal effect of a transaction having its seat in another must be governed by the common law of that State, where is it to be found? If there have been decisions of its highest courts in regard to what it is with reference to the point in question, they will ordinarily be accepted as conclusive.

This is not by virtue of the provision in the Constitution of the United States that full faith and credit is to be given in each State to the public records and proceedings of the others. That refers to the effect of public records and proceedings upon the rights of those who are or claim under parties to them. Such decisions as those which have been described are accepted as conclusive as to the rights of those who were not parties to them, and simply because they are considered the best evidence attainable of a rule of unwritten law of general application. But they are not universally so considered. The rule that transactions are governed by the law of the place where they have their seat is one founded on the presumed intent of the parties to them. But in fact the parties to a business transaction act on their general notions of what the law is or must be, rather than on any particular knowledge of what courts have declared that it is. The rule that one country will accept the opinion of the judicial authorities of another as to what its law is, is one not to be pressed so far as to sacrifice essential justice. In this point of view, some courts hold that it is permissible to disregard decisions of other States which are based on a departure from what is generally considered a settled doctrine of the common law as to a commercial question. This is substantially the same position taken by the Supreme Court of the United States, and elsewhere described,[Footnote: See Chap. X.] concerning the right of a federal court to refuse to be bound by State decisions as to the unwritten law affecting foreign trade or trade between the States.[Footnote: Faulkner v. Hart, 82 N. Y. Reports, 413, 423.]