The refusal of State courts to make returns on writs of errors issued by the Supreme Court has already been noted in connection with the disobedience of the Virginia courts in Martin v. Hunter's Lessee[648] and Cohens v. Virginia[649] and in that of the Wisconsin court in Ableman v. Booth.[650] More spectacular disobedience to federal authority arose out of the Cherokee Indian case involving actions of Georgia and its courts. In the first of these the Supreme Court had issued a writ of error to the Georgia Supreme Court to review the conviction of Corn Tassel for the murder of another Cherokee Indian. The writ was served, but before a hearing could be held Corn Tassel was executed on the day originally set for punishment contrary to the federal law that a writ of error superseded sentence until the appeal was decided. This action ensued as a result of the legislature's approval of the governor's policy that he would permit no interference with Georgia's courts by orders of the Supreme Court and would resist by force any attempt to enforce them with all the forces at his command.[651]
Worcester v. Georgia
Two years later Georgia renewed its defiance of the Supreme Court in Worcester v. Georgia[652] which involved the conviction of two missionaries for residing among the Indians without a license. The Supreme Court reversed the conviction on the ground that the State had no jurisdiction over the Cherokee reservations and ordered Worcester's discharge in a special mandate to the superior court of Gwinnett County. The State court ignored the mandate and once again the governor of the State announced that he would meet such usurpation by the Supreme Court with determined resistance. Consequently, Worcester and Butler remained in jail until they agreed to abandon further efforts for their discharge by federal authority in the form of a writ of error, whereupon the governor pardoned them on the condition that they leave the State.
CONFLICTS OF JURISDICTION: COMITY
Aside from these more dramatic assertions of independence of federal courts, State court interference with the federal judiciary has occurred for the most part in conflicts of jurisdiction which affect only the lower federal courts as courts of concurrent jurisdiction and in attempts to release persons in federal custody. To the extent that this phase of federal-state relations is not governed by statute or the supremacy clause of article VI, it is governed by comity, a self-imposed rule of judicial morality whereby independent tribunals of concurrent or coordinate jurisdiction exercise a mutual restraint in order to prevent interference with each other and to avoid collisions of authority. Although the Court on one occasion has stated that the principle of comity is not a rule of law but "one of practice, convenience, and expediency"[653] which persuades, but does not command, it has also declared that in the American Federal System it has come to have "a higher sanction than the utility which comes from concord" and has been converted into a principle "of right and of law, and therefore of necessity."[654] As developed and applied by the Supreme Court the rule of comity is exemplified in three classes of cases: First, those in which a court has acquired jurisdiction of the res or the possession of property and another court interferes with that jurisdiction or possession; second, those in which a court has acquired jurisdiction or custody of the person and another interferes with such jurisdiction or custody, most frequently by discharges from custody in habeas corpus proceedings; and, third, those in which injunctions are used to stay proceedings in another court or to enjoin official action before the courts of proper jurisdiction have had an opportunity to adjudicate the issue.
JURISDICTION OF THE RES
As applied by the Supreme Court in cases involving concurrent jurisdiction the principle of comity means that when the jurisdiction of a court and the right of a plaintiff to prosecute a suit therein have attached and when a court has acquired constructive possession of property, such jurisdiction cannot be taken away or obstructed by proceedings in another court, nor can the possession of the property be disturbed by proceedings in another court; and the court which has first acquired jurisdiction of the cause or the possession of the res has exclusive jurisdiction to hear and determine the case and all controversies relating thereto, provided that the subject matter of the suit, the remedies sought, and the parties to it are the same, and provided further that it is not necessary for the federal courts to exercise jurisdiction in order to enforce the supremacy of the Constitution and laws of the United States.[655]
STATE INTERFERENCE BY INJUNCTION WITH FEDERAL JURISDICTION
It has long been settled as a general rule that State courts have no power to enjoin proceedings or judgments of the federal courts.[656] In United States ex rel. Riggs v. Johnson County[657] this rule was attributed to no paramount jurisdiction of the federal courts, but rather to the complete independence of the State and federal courts in their spheres of action. Like many of the rules governing federal-state court relations, this rule is not absolute, as shown by a case arising in Pennsylvania. Two surviving trustees had filed an account for themselves and a deceased trustee in a court of common pleas. Thereafter, two of the five beneficiaries sued the two trustees and the deceased trustee in a federal district court, charging mismanagement and praying for an accounting and restitution and removal of the trustees. The Supreme Court held that the State court upon the filing of the account acquired jurisdiction over the trust quasi in rem exclusively and therefore sustained the State court's injunction restraining the parties from further proceeding in the federal court while simultaneously holding that the district court could not enjoin the parties from proceeding in the State court.[658] The power of a State court to enjoin parties from proceeding in a federal court obviously does not include that of enjoining a federal court.