287

JACKSON, J., dissenting.

has been particularly apparent in cases where the Court has authorized, if not indeed encouraged, the several states to set up their own standards of domicile and to make conflicting findings of domicile for the purpose of taxing the right of succession. Worcester County Trust Co. v. Riley, 302 U. S. 292. The Court has completely repudiated domicile as the measure of a state's right to tax intangible property. State Tax Commission v. Aldrich, 316 U. S. 174, 185. The present decision extends the trend to the field of matrimonial legislation. This direction is contrary to what I believe to be the purpose of our Constitution to prevent overlapping and conflict of authority between the states.

In the application of the full faith and credit clause to the variety of circumstances that arise when families break up and separate domiciles are established, there are, I grant, many areas of great difficulty. But I cannot believe that we are justified in making a demoralizing decision in order to avoid making difficult ones.

IV.

PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS.

Con

The Court says that its judgment is "part of the price of our federal system." It is a price that we did not have to pay yesterday and that we will have to pay tomorrow, only because this Court has willed it to be so today. This Court may follow precedents, irrespective of their merits, as a matter of obedience to the rule of stare decisis. sistency and stability may be so served. They are ends desirable in themselves, for only thereby can the law be predictable to those who must shape their conduct by it and to lower courts which must apply it. But we can break with established law, overrule precedents, and start a new cluster of leading cases to define what we mean, only as a matter of deliberate policy. We therefore search a

JACKSON, J., dissenting.

317 U.S.

judicial pronouncement that ushers in a new order of matrimonial confusion and irresponsibility for some hint of the countervailing public good that is believed to be served by the change. Little justification is offered. And it is difficult to believe that what is offered is intended seriously.

The Court advances two "intensely practical considerations" in support of its present decision. One is the "complicated and serious condition" if "one is lawfully divorced and remarried in Nevada and still married to the first spouse in North Carolina." This of course begs the question, for the divorces were completely ineffectual for any purpose relevant to this case. I agree that it is serious. if a Nevada court without jurisdiction for divorce purports to say that the sojourn of two spouses gives four spouses rights to acquire four more, but I think it far more serious to force North Carolina to acquiesce in any such proposition. The other consideration advanced is that if the Court doesn't enforce divorces such as these it will, as it puts it, "bastardize" children of the divorcees. When thirty-seven years ago Mr. Justice Holmes perpetrated this quip, it had point, for the Court was then holding divorces invalid which many, due to the confused state of the law, had thought to be good. It is difficult to find that it has point now that the shoe is on the other foot. In any event, I had supposed that our judicial responsibility is for the regularity of the law, not for the regularity of pedigrees.

Opinion of the Court.

WRAGG v. FEDERAL LAND BANK OF NEW

ORLEANS.

CERTIORARI TO THE CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT.

No. 172. Argued December 10, 1942.-Decided January 4, 1943.

1. A farmer-debtor, whose petition under § 75 of the Bankruptcy Act has been dismissed and whose application to reopen the proceeding has been denied, may initiate a new proceeding under § 75 where he retains a property interest which could be administered in such a proceeding. P. 327.

2. The statutory right of a farmer-debtor, in Alabama, to redeem after foreclosure of a mortgage, whether it be denominated a property right or a privilege, is an interest within the jurisdiction of the bankruptcy court and capable of administration under § 75 of the Bankruptcy Act. Pp. 328-329.

3. Section 75 of the Bankruptcy Act prescribes its own criteria for determining what property interests may be brought within the jurisdiction of the court. In the interpretation and application of the Bankruptcy Act as in the case of other federal statutes, federal not local law applies. P. 328.

125 F. 2d 1003, reversed.

CERTIORARI, post, p. 608, to review the affirmance of a judgment of the bankruptcy court (34 F. Supp. 374) which denied an application to reopen a proceeding under § 75 of the Bankruptcy Act or for permission to begin a new proceeding under that Section.

Mr. Jack Crenshaw, with whom Messrs. Walter J. Knabe and Elmer McClain were on the brief, for petitioner.

Mr. Thomas Harvey Hedgepeth for respondent.

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE STONE delivered the opinion of the Court.

After her petition for a composition or extension of her debts in a farmer-debtor proceeding under § 75 of the

Bankruptcy Act, 11 U. S. C. § 203, had been dismissed, petitioner applied to reopen the proceeding or, in the alternative, to be permitted to institute a new proceeding under § 75. The questions for our decision are whether the courts below erred in denying her application and whether, at the time of her application, her right as mortgagor to redeem Alabama real estate after its sale on foreclosure of the mortgage was such that it can be administered by the court in a § 75 proceeding.

In 1937, after respondent mortgagee had obtained a decree of foreclosure, but before foreclosure sale, petitioner filed a petition under § 75 seeking a composition or extension of her debts. The bankruptcy court referred the proceeding to a conciliation commissioner; petitioner filed proposed terms of composition or extension to which respondent filed objections; the conciliation commissioner then recommended that the offer be not approved, on the ground that it did not contain an equitable and feasible method of liquidating respondent's claim and of securing petitioner's financial rehabilitation.

The court confirmed the report of the conciliation commissioner, holding that petitioner was not entitled to amend her petition so as to proceed under § 75 (s), and directed that the proceeding be dismissed as of January 19, 1938. Petitioner's motion for leave to appeal to the Circuit Court of Appeals in forma pauperis and her petition for certiorari to this Court were denied. 95 F. 2d 252; 305 U. S. 596. After the farmer-debtor proceeding was dismissed respondent purchased the mortgaged property at a foreclosure sale, which was confirmed in April, 1938. Nearly a year later, respondent contracted to sell the property to a third party, the contract stipulating that it was "subject to the statutory right of redemption following foreclosure if any exists."

Alabama law allows to the mortgagor a two-year redemption period after foreclosure sale. Title 7, § 727,

Code of Alabama, 1940. On March 11, 1940, one day before the expiration of this period,' petitioner filed her application in the bankruptcy court. It referred to her prior § 75 proceeding, alleging that her property had not been fully administered in that proceeding and that she was entitled to further relief, especially in the light of the changed conditions and interpretation of the Act (obviously a reference to the decision in John Hancock Ins. Co. v. Bartels, 308 U. S. 180, decided December 4, 1939). She accordingly prayed that the case be reopened and reinstated. In the alternative she asked that, if she were entitled only to file a new petition, then her former schedules should be deemed a part of her petition, and she offered to pay such filing fees as the statute requires.

The district court thought that even though the dismissal of the original proceeding was erroneous under the rule subsequently announced in the Bartels case, there were no circumstances sufficient to persuade the court, in the exercise of its discretion, that the proceeding should be reopened upon an application filed more than two years after it had been dismissed. The court accordingly denied the application. 34 F. Supp. 374. The Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed. 125 F.2d 1003. We granted certiorari, post, p. 608, the questions raised being of importance in the administration of the Bankruptcy Act.

We do not differ with the conclusion of both courts below that it was within the sound discretion of the bankruptcy court to decline to reopen the original order of dismissal. A motion to reopen a proceeding may not properly be substituted for an appeal from its decision. See Wayne Gas Co. v. Owens Co., 300 U. S. 131, 135; Pfister v. Northern Illinois Finance Corp., ante, pp. 153

1 Petitioner contends that on March 11, 1940, nearly six weeks of the period of redemption remained. We find it unnecessary to determine the correctness of this contention.