or try him. No questions involve more general principles of law than those of pardon and jurisdiction, questions and principles common to all courts, local and peculiar to none. See United States v. Wilson, 7 Pel. 150 cited supra. Because the highest state court has passed upon and denied a pardon, it is not therefore a local question, peculiar to that State, and this court is not bound to follow that decision. The established principles of the common law control in determining the validity of a pardon. Olcott v. Supervisors, 16 Wall. 678; Mohr v. Manierre, 7 Biss. 419.

Federal courts do not follow state decisions upon the construction or enforcement of state laws, if they violate the Federal Constitution, or the rights it guarantees. Rowan v. Runnels, 5 How. 134; Bank of Ohio v. Knoop, 16 How. 369; Jefferson Branch Bank v. Skelly, 1 Black, 436.

The decisions rejecting Powers' pardon cannot be here followed, not only because general principles of law, common to all courts, are involved, but because they deny to Powers the equal protection of the law in such a discrimination.

The Federal Government recognized Taylor as Governor of Kentucky and such recognition binds all courts. Black's Constitutional Law, pp. 83, 241-244; Luther v. Borden, 7 How. 1; Jones v. United States, 137 U. S. 202; Hamilton v. McClaughry, 136 Fed. Rep. 445; Sutton v. Tiller, 98 Am. Dec. 471; The Hornet, Fed. Cas. No. 6,705.

MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, delivered the opinion of the court.

Powers, the accused, was indicted in the Circuit Court of Franklin County, Kentucky, for the crime of having been an accessory before the fact to the murder of William Goebel, who was assassinated in that county on the thirtieth day of January, 1900. The prosecution was removed by change of venue to the Circuit Court of Scott County. In the latter court the accused was found guilty and his punishment fixed by the jury at confinement in the state penitentiary for life. Upon appeal

to the Court of Appeals of Kentucky the judgment was reversed and a new trial ordered. Powers v. Commonwealth, 110 Kentucky, 386. At the second trial the verdict was guilty, and the punishment was again fixed at confinement in the penitentiary for life. Upon appeal, that judgment was reversed and a new trial ordered. Powers v. Commonwealth, 114 Kentucky, 239. A third trial occurred, which resulted in a verdict of guilty, with the punishment fixed at death. This judgment was also reversed and the case sent back for a new trial. Powers v. Com

monwealth, 83 S. W. Rep. 146.

When the case came on for trial the fourth time the accused tendered and offered to file in the state court his petition praying, upon grounds therein stated (and which appear in the above statement) that the prosecution be removed for trial into the Circuit Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Kentucky. But the state court would not allow the petition to be filed. Subsequently, a partial transcript of the record was filed in the Federal court, and the case was docketed in that court. The Commonwealth objected to the filing of the transcript from the state court and to the docketing of the case in the Federal court, and moved to vacate the order of filing and docketing. That motion was overruled.

Thereupon the accused, by his counsel, presented to the Federal court an application for a writ of habeas corpus, in order that he might be discharged from the custody of the state authorities. For the reasons set forth in the opinion of that court the application was granted and a writ ordered to issue commanding the jailer of Scott County, who held the accused in custody for the State, to deliver him into the custody of the marshal of the Federal court, which was done, that officer being directed to keep the accused confined in the county jail of Campbell County, Kentucky, until the further order of the Federal court. Commonwealth v. Powers, 139 Fed. Rep. 452. From that order the Commonwealth of Kentucky has prosecuted the above appeal (No. 393), the sole ground of such appeal being that the Federal court was without jurisdiction to make the

order allowing the writ of habeas corpus and taking the accused from the custody of the state authorities. The accused has moved to dismiss the appeal because the remedy of the Commonwealth was by a writ of mandamus.

The Commonwealth also asked leave to file a petition for mandamus to compel the Federal court to remand the case to the state court and to restore the custody of the accused to the state authorities. Leave to file was granted and the Federal judge, having made his return, submitted the rule upon the record of the case, including the opinion filed by the court below when the writ of habeas corpus was awarded to take the accused from the custody of the state authorities. This is case No. 15, Original.

The fundamental question to be determined is whether the removal of this criminal prosecution from the state court into the Federal court was authorized by any statute of the United States. We say, by any statute, because the subordinate judicial tribunals of the United States can exercise only such jurisdiction, civil and criminal, as may be authorized by acts of Congress. Chief Justice Marshall, speaking for this court, has said that "courts which originate in the common law possess a jurisdiction which must be regulated by their common law, until some statute shall change their established principles; but courts which are created by written law, and whose jurisdiction is defined by written law, cannot transcend that jurisdiction." Ex parte Bollman &c., 4 Cr. 75, 93; United States v. Hudson, 7 Cr. 32, 33; Cary v. Curtis, 3 How. 236, 245; McIntire v. Wood, 7 Cr. 504, 506; United States v. Eckford, 6 Wall. 484, 488; Sheldon v. Sill, 8 How. 441, 449; Jones v. United States, 137 U. S. 202, 211; The Sewing Machine Companies, 18 Wall. 553, 571; Holmes v. Goldsmith, 147 U S. 150, 158.

The adjudged cases make it clear that whatever the nature of a civil suit or criminal proceeding in a state court, it cannot be removed into a Federal court unless warrant therefor be found in some act of Congress.

We are now to inquire whether the case was removable from the state court, in virtue of any act of Congress.

The removal of this prosecution into the Federal court was rested on §§ 641, 642 Revised Statutes, which are as follows: "SEC. 641. When any civil suit or criminal prosecution is commenced in any state court, for any cause whatsoever, against any person who is denied or cannot enforce in the judicial tribunals of the State, or in the part of the State where such suit or prosecution is pending, any right secured to him by any law providing for the equal civil rights of citizens of the United States, or of all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States, such suit or prosecution may upon the petition of such defendant, filed in said state court at any time before the trial or final hearing of the cause, stating the facts and verified by oath, be removed, for trial, into the next Circuit Court to be held in the district where it is pending. Upon the filing of such petition all further proceedings in the state courts shall cease, and shall' not be resumed except as hereinafter provided. But all bail and other security given in such suit or prosecution shall continue in like force and effect as if the same had proceeded to final judgment and execution in the state court.

"SEC. 642. When all the acts necessary for the removal of any suit of prosecution, as provided in the preceding section, have been performed, and the defendant petitioning for such removal is in actual custody on process issued by said state court, it shall be the duty of the clerk of said Circuit Court to issue a writ of habeas corpus cum causa, and of the marshal, by virtue of said writ, to take the body of the defendant into his custody, to be dealt with in said Circuit Court according to law and the orders of said court, or, in vacation, of any judge thereof; and the marshal shall file with or deliver to the clerk of said state court a duplicate copy of said writ."

The contention of the Commonwealth is that the decisions of this court wholly preclude the suggestion that section 641 authorized the removal of this case into the Federal court. In view of this contention we must see what has been heretofore decided.

Among the cases to which our attention has been called, the first one, in point of time, involving the construction of section 641, is Ex parte Wells, 3 Woods, 128, 132, determined in the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Louisiana, Mr. Justice Bradley presiding. The accused there sought to remove the prosecution from the state court, upon the ground, among others, that such vindictive prejudice existed against them on the part of the law-making and law-administering authorities of the State that they would be denied their rights as citizens in the state court, as well as before any jury that might be impanelled therein under the then existing jury law of the State; consequently, they would not be able to enforce their rights in said court. It was also alleged that the state court and its officers had so manipulated the local law as to deprive the accused of an impartial jury, and that they would be deprived of the full and equal benefit of the laws and proceedings for the security of their persons. The court, having found that there was nothing in the constitution or laws of the State that was hostile to the equal rights of the accused, in any particular, said: "The allegations with regard to the manipulation of the law in such manner as to secure a jury inimical to the petitioners, and with regard to the existence of a general prejudice against them in the minds of the court, the jurors, the officials and the people, are not within the purview of the statute authorizing a removal. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees the equal benefit of the laws on which the present application is based, only prohibits state legislation violative of said right; it is not directed against individual infringements thereof. The civil rights bill of 1866 was broader in its scope, undertaking to vindicate those rights against individual aggression; but, still, only when committed under color of some 'law, statute, ordinance, regulation or custom.' And when that provision in this law, which is transferred to section 641 of the Revised Statutes, gave the right to remove to the United States courts a cause commenced in a state court against a person who is denied or cannot enforce any