In other cases, however, the Court, centering its attention upon the elements of a case or controversy, has declined jurisdiction. Thus in Alabama v. Arizona[471] where Alabama sought to enjoin 19 States from regulating or prohibiting the sale of convict-made goods, the Court went far beyond holding that it had no jurisdiction, and indicated that jurisdiction of suits between States will be exercised only when absolutely necessary, that the equity requirements in a suit between States are more exacting than in a suit between private persons, that the threatened injury to a plaintiff State must be of great magnitude and imminent, and that the burden on the plaintiff State to establish all the elements of a case is greater than that generally required by a petitioner seeking an injunction suit in cases between private parties.
Pursuing a similar line of reasoning, the Court declined to take jurisdiction of a suit brought by Massachusetts against Missouri and certain of its citizens to prevent Missouri from levying inheritance taxes upon intangibles held in trust in Missouri by resident trustees. In holding that the complaint presented no justiciable controversy, the Court declared that to constitute such a controversy, the complainant State must show that it "has suffered a wrong through the action of the other State, furnishing ground for judicial redress, or is asserting a right against the other State which is susceptible of judicial enforcement according to * * * the common law or equity systems of jurisprudence."[472] The fact that the trust property was sufficient to satisfy the claims of both States and that recovery by either would not impair any rights of the other distinguished the case from Texas v. Florida,[473] where the contrary situation obtained. Furthermore, the Missouri statute providing for reciprocal privileges in levying inheritance taxes did not confer upon Massachusetts any contractual right. The Court then proceeded to reiterate its earlier rule that a State may not invoke the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court for the benefit of its residents or to enforce the individual rights of its citizens.[474] Moreover, Massachusetts could not invoke the original jurisdiction of the Court by the expedient of making citizens of Missouri parties to a suit not otherwise maintainable.[475] Accordingly, Massachusetts was held not to be without an adequate remedy in Missouri's courts or in a federal district court in Missouri.[476]
THE PROBLEM OF ENFORCEMENT; VIRGINIA v. WEST VIRGINIA
A very important issue that presents itself in interstate litigation is the enforcement of the Court's decree, once it has been entered. In some types of suits, as Charles Warren has indicated, this issue may not arise; and if it does, it may be easily met. Thus a judgment putting a State in possession of disputed territory is ordinarily self-executing. But if the losing State should oppose execution, refractory State officials, as individuals, would be liable to civil suits or criminal prosecutions in the federal courts. Likewise an injunction decree may be enforced against State officials as individuals by civil or criminal proceedings. Those judgments, on the other hand, which require a State in its governmental capacity to perform some positive act present the issue of enforcement in more serious form. The issue arose directly in the long and much litigated case between Virginia and West Virginia over the proportion of the State debt of original Virginia owed by West Virginia after its separate admission to the Union under a compact which provided that West Virginia assume a share of the debt. The suit was begun in 1906, and a judgment was rendered against West Virginia in 1915. Finally in 1917 Virginia filed a suit against West Virginia to show cause why, in default of payment of the judgment, an order should not be entered directing the West Virginia legislature to levy a tax for payment of the judgment.[477] Starting with the rule that the judicial power essentially involves the right to enforce the results of its exertion,[478] the Court proceeded to hold that it applied with the same force to States as to other litigants,[479] and to consider appropriate remedies for the enforcement of its authority. In this connection, Chief Justice White declared: "As the powers to render the judgment and to enforce it arise from the grant in the Constitution on that subject, looked at from a generic point of view, both are federal powers and, comprehensively considered, are sustained by every authority of the federal government, judicial, legislative, or executive, which may be appropriately exercised."[480] The Court, however, left open the question of its power to enforce the judgment under existing legislation and scheduled the case for reargument at the next term, but in the meantime West Virginia accepted the Court's judgment and entered into an agreement with Virginia to pay it.[481]
Controversies Between a State and Citizens of Another State
The decision in Chisholm v. Georgia[482] that this category of cases included equally those where a State was a party defendant provoked the proposal and ratification of the Eleventh Amendment, and since then controversies between a State and citizens of another State have included only those cases where the State has been a party plaintiff or has consented to be sued. As a party plaintiff, a State may bring actions against citizens of other States to protect its legal rights or as parens patriae to protect the health and welfare of its citizens. In general, the Court has tended to construe strictly this grant of judicial power which simultaneously comes within its original jurisdiction by perhaps an even more rigorous application of the concepts of cases and controversies than that in cases between private parties.[483] This it does by holding rigorously to the rule that all the party defendants be citizens of other States,[484] and by adhering to Congressional distribution of its original jurisdiction concurrently with that of other federal courts.[485]
NON-JUSTICIABLE CONTROVERSIES
The Supreme Court has refused to take jurisdiction of a number of suits brought by States because of the lack of a justiciable controversy. In cases like Mississippi v. Johnson[486] and Georgia v. Stanton,[487] the political nature of the controversy constituted the dominant reason. In others, like Massachusetts v. Mellon[488] and Florida v. Mellon,[489] the political issue, though present, was accompanied by the inability of a State to sue in behalf of its citizens as parens patriae to contest the validity of an act of Congress when in national matters the National Government bore the relation of parens patriae to the same persons as citizens of the United States. Moreover, a State may not bring a suit in its own name for the benefit of particular persons.[490]
JURISDICTION CONFINED TO CIVIL CASES
In Cohens v. Virginia[491] there is a dictum to the effect that the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court does not include suits between a State and its own citizens. Long afterwards, the Supreme Court dismissed an action for want of jurisdiction because the record did not show the corporation against which the suit was brought was chartered in another State.[492] Subsequently the Court has ruled that it will not entertain an action by a State to which its citizens are either parties of record, or would have to be joined because of the effect of a judgment upon them.[493] In his dictum in Cohens v. Virginia, Chief Justice Marshall also indicated that perhaps no jurisdiction existed over suits by States to enforce their penal laws.[494] Sixty-seven years later the Court wrote this dictum into law in Wisconsin v. Pelican Insurance Co.[495] Here Wisconsin sued a Louisiana corporation to recover a judgment rendered in its favor by one of its own courts. Relying partly on the rule of international law that the courts of no country execute the penal laws of another, partly upon the 13th section of the Judiciary Act of 1789 which vested the Supreme Court with exclusive jurisdiction of controversies of a civil nature where a State is a party, and partly on Justice Iredell's dissent in Chisholm v. Georgia,[496] where he confined the term "controversies" to civil suits, Justice Gray ruled for the Court that for purposes of original jurisdiction, "controversies between a State and citizens of another State" are confined to civil suits.[497]