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§ 90. Summary.

By way of résumé we may say that, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment has not brought about any fundamental change in our constitutional system. No new subjects have been brought within the sphere of direct control of the Federal Government. No new privileges and immunities of federal citizenship have been created or recognized. To Congress has been given no new direct primary, legislative power. It has not been authorized by the Amendment to determine and define the privileges and immunities of federal citizens, nor to define and affirmatively to provide for the protection of the rights of life, liberty, and property, nor by direct legislation to enumerate and describe the privileges which shall constitute the equal protection of the laws. The only legislative power granted to Congress by the Amendment, is the power to provide modes of relief in cases where the States have deprived individuals or corporations of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or denied to anyone within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. The supervisory powers of the federal courts has been enormously increased; as, by the Amendment, they may examine every claim of illegal violations by States of the prohibitions laid upon them by the Amendment, and where the claim is sustained grant the necessary relief, either by the issuance of the appropriate writ, or by holding void the offending state laws. In fine, then, the Fourteenth Amendment has operated rather as a limitation upon the powers of the States than as a grant of additional powers to the General Government.

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CHAPTER XII.

INTERSTATE RELATIONS; FULL FORCE AND CREDIT CLAUSE.

§ 91. States Independent of One Another.

In the chapters which have been gone before the constitutional relations which exist between the Federal Government upon the one side and the State upon the other side have been considered. In the present chapter a description will be given of the relations which exist between the several States.

Except as otherwise specifically provided by the federal Constitution, the States of the American Union, when acting within the spheres of government reserved to them, stand toward one another as independent and wholly separated States. The laws of the State have no force, and their officials have here no public authority, outside of their own territorial boundaries. As to all these matters their relations inter se are governed by the general principles of Private International Law or, as otherwise termed, the Conflict of Laws.

During the colonial period the judgments of the courts of the colonies were, as to one another, strictly foreign judgments. That is, they could be impeached for fraud or prejudice, and their merits re-examined. The inconvenience of this state of affairs. was soon recognized, and in the Articles of Confederation it was provided that "Full faith and credit shall be given in each of these States to the records, acts, and judicial proceedings of the courts and magistrates of every other State." The important difference between this provision and the corresponding one in the present Constitution is that in the latter Congress is given authority to fix by statute the manner in which these acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved and to determine the effect that shall be given them.

1 Article IV.

§ 92. Congressional Legislation.

By a law passed in 1790 Congress provided: "That the acts of the legislature of the several States shall be authenticated by having the seal of their respective States affixed thereto; that the records and judicial proceedings of the courts of any State shall be proved or admitted in any court within the United States by the attestation of the clerk, and the seal of the court annexed, if there be a seal, together with a certificate of the judge, chief justice, or presiding magistrate, as the case may be, that the said attestation is in due form. And the said records and judicial proceedings authenticated as aforesaid shall have such faith and credit given to them in every court within the United States, as they have by law or usage in the courts of the State from whence the said records are or shall be taken." 2

In 1809 this act was supplemented by one which, after providing for the authentication of other than judicial records, declared, in its second section: "And be it further enacted, that all the provisions of this act, and the act to which this is a supplement [Act of 1790] shall apply as well as to the public acts, records, office books, judicial proceedings, courts, and offices of the respective territories of the United States and countries subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, as to the public acts, records, office books, judicial proceedings, courts and officers of the several States." 3

In Mills v. Duryee decided in 1813, the Supreme Court, construing these acts held that by them Congress had not only provided for the admission of authenticated judgments of a State as evidence in the courts of the other States in the Union, but that it had, in execution of the constitutional provision, declared that they should be conclusive evidence of all matters properly adjudicated therein.

21 U. S. Stat. at L. 122.

32 U. S. Stat. at L. 298. These two sections are united in section 905 of the Revised Statutes. In a law enacted in 1895 it is provided by Congress that: "The pamphlet copies of the statutes and the bound copies of the Acts of each Congress shall be legal evidence of the laws therein contained in all the courts of the United States and of the several States therein." Section 73, Act of Jan. 2, Ch. 23 (28 Stat. at L. 601).

47 Cr. 481; 3 L. ed. 411.

This full faith and credit clause, it is to be observed, has reference only to the States, and not to the Territories or to the District of Columbia. Therefore it has been decided that the act of 1804, in as far as it has reference to the Territories and to the District of Columbia, rests, for its constitutionality, upon other clauses of the Constitution. Thus in Embry v. Palmer the court say: "So far as this statutory provision relates to the effect to be given to the judicial proceedings of the States, it is founded on article IV, section I, of the Constitution, which, however, does not extend to the other cases covered by the statute. The power to prescribe what effect shall be given to the judicial proceedings of the courts of the United States is conferred by other provisions of the Constitution, such as those which declare the extent of the judicial power of the United States, which authorize all legislation necessary and proper for executing the powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof, and which declare the supremacy of the authority of the National Government within the limits of the Constitution. As part of its general authority, the power to give effect to the judgments of its courts is co-extensive with its territorial jurisdiction. That the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia is a court of the United States, results from the right which the Constitution has given to Congress of exclusive legislation over the District. Accordingly, the judgments of the courts of the United States have invariably been recognized as upon the same footing, so far as concerns the obligation created by them, with domestic judgments of the States, wherever rendered and wherever sought to be enforced."

The same reasoning that in Embry v. Palmer seems to support the power of Congress to give to judgments rendered in the District of Columbia full force and credit in the States, is sufficient to support its power to give equal force in the States to judgments rendered in the Territories and insular possessions of the United States, and vice versa as to state judgments sued upon in the Territories or in the insular possessions.

5107 U. S. 3; 2 Sup. Ct. Rep. 25; 27 L. ed. 346.

§ 93. Federal Judgments and Decrees.

In numerous cases it has been held that full force and credit is to be given to judgments of federal courts obtained in one State or Territory when sought to be enforced in the federal courts in another State or Territory, or the District of Columbia. This is due to the fact that, as the Supreme Court say in Claflin v. Houseman, 6 "The United States is not a foreign sovereignty as regards the several States, but is a concurrent, and, within its jurisdiction, a paramount sovereignty. Every citizen of a State is a subject of two distinct sovereignties, having concurrent jurisdiction in the State, concurrent as to place and persons, though distinct as to subject-matter. Legal or equitable rights, acquired under either system of laws, may be enforced in any court of either sovereignty competent to hear and determine such kinds of rights and not restrained by its Constitution in the exercise of such jurisdiction. Thus, a legal or equitable right acquired under state laws may be prosecuted in the state courts, and also, if the parties reside in different States, in the federal courts. So rights, whether legal or equitable, acquired under the laws of the United States, may be prosecuted in the United States courts, or in the state courts, competent to decide rights of the like character and class; subject, however, to this qualification, that where a right arises under a law of the United States, Congress may, if it sees fit, give to the federal courts exclusive jurisdiction."

§ 94. Full Faith and Credit Clause Applies only to Civil Judgments and Decrees.

It seems scarcely necessary to say that the "full force and credit" clause has reference only to civil judgments. No State, it has been held, is by this provision compelled to lend its aid in the enforcement of the penal laws of another. This was definitely determined in Wisconsin v. Pelican Insurance Company. In this case original suit had been brought in the Supreme Court of the United States by the State of Wisconsin upon

€93 U. S. 130; 23 L. ed. 833.

7127 U. S. 265; 8 Sup. Ct. Rep. 1370; 32 L. ed. 239.

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