210 U.S. WHITE, HARLAN, MCKENNA and DAY, JJ., dissenting. sonal service upon the other citizen of Mississippi, the latter being temporarily in the State of Missouri. The action was put at issue. Rejecting evidence offered by the defendant to show the nature of the transactions, and that under the laws of Mississippi the same were illegal and criminal, the Missouri court submitted the cause to a jury, with an instruction to find for the plaintiff if they believed that the award had been made as alleged. A verdict and judgment went in favor of the plaintiff. Thereupon the judgment so obtained was assigned by the plaintiff to his attorney, who sued upon the same in a court of Mississippi, where the facts upon which the transaction depended were set up and the prohibitory statutes of the State were pleaded as a defense. Ultimately the case went to the Supreme Court of the State of Mississippi, where it was decided that the Missouri judgment was not required, under the due faith and credit clause, to be enforced in Mississippi, as it concerned transactions which had taken place exclusively in Mississippi, between residents of that State, which were in violation of laws embodying the public policy of that State, and to give effect to which would be enforcing transactions which the courts of Mississippi had no authority to enforce. This court now reverses on the ground that the due faith and credit clause obliged the courts of Mississippi, in consequence of the action of the Missouri court, to give efficacy to transactions in Mississippi which were criminal, and which were against the public policy of that State. Although not wishing in the slightest degree to weaken the operation of the due faith and credit clause as interpreted and applied from the beginning, it to me seems that this ruling so enlarges that clause as to cause it to obliterate all state lines, since the effect will be to endow each State with authority to overthrow the public policy and criminal statutes of the others, thereby depriving all of their lawful authority. Moreover, the ruling now made, in my opinion, is contrary to the conceptions which caused the due faith and credit clause to be placed in the Constitution, and substantially overrules the previous decisions of this court WHITE, HARLAN, MCKENNA and DAY, JJ., dissenting. 210 U. S. interpreting that clause. My purpose is to briefly state the reasons which lead me to these conclusions. The foundation upon which our system of government rests is the possession by the States of the right, except as restricted by the Constitution, to exert their police powers as they may deem best for the happiness and welfare of those subject to their authority. The whole theory upon which the Constitution was framed, and by which alone, it seems to me, it can continue, is the recognition of the fact that different conditions may exist in the different States, rendering necessary the enactment of regulations of a particular subject in one State when such subject may not in another be deemed to require regulation; in other words, that in Massachusetts, owing to conditions which may there prevail, the legislature may deem it necessary to make police regulations on a particular subject, although like regulations may not obtain in other States. And, of course, such also may be the case in Louisiana or any other State. If it be that the ruling now made deprives the States of powers admittedly theirs, it follows that the ruling must be wrong. The inquiry whether the ruling does so becomes, therefore, directly pertinent, not merely from considerations of inconvenience, but as a matter of substantial demonstration. The due faith and credit clause it is now decided means that residents of a State may within such State do acts which are violative of public policy, and yet that a judgment may be rendered in another State giving effect to such transactions, which judgment it becomes the duty of the State whose laws have been set at defiance to enforce. It must follow, if one State by the mere form of a judgment has this power, that no State has in effect the authority to make police regulations, or, what is tantamount to the same thing, is without power to enforce them. If this be true the doctrine now upheld comes to this, that no State, generally speaking, possesses police power concerning acts done within its borders if any of the results of such acts may be the subject of civil actions, since the enforcement by the State of its po 210 U.S. WHITE, HARLAN, MCKENNA and DAY, JJ., dissenting. lice regulations as to such acts may be nullified by an exertion of the judicial power of another State. Indeed the principle, as understood by me, goes further than this, since it not only gives to each of the States in the cases suggested the power to render possible an evasion of the police laws of all the other States, but it gives to each State the authority to compel the other States, through their courts, to give effect to illegal transactions done within their borders. It may not be denied that a State which has lawfully prohibited the enforcement of a particular character of transaction and made the same criminal has an interest in seeing that its laws are enforced and will be subjected to the gravest humiliation if it be compelled to give effect to acts done within its borders which are in violation of its valid police or criminal laws. And the consciousness of the enforced debasement to which it would be subjected if compelled to enter a decree giving effect to acts of residents of Mississippi, done within that State, which were violative of the public policy of the State and which were criminal, was clearly shown in the opinion of the Supreme Court of the State in this case. When the Constitution was adopted the principles of comity by which the decrees of the courts of one State were entitled to be enforced in another were generally known, but the enforcement of those principles by the several States had no absolute sanction, since they rested but in comity. Now it cannot be denied that under the rules of comity recognized at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, and which at this time universally prevail, no sovereignty was or is under the slightest moral obligation to give effect to a judgment of a court of another sovereignty, when to do so would compel the State in which the judgment, was sought to be executed to enforce an illegal and prohibited contract, when both the contract and all the acts done in connection with its performance had taken place in the latter State. This seems to me conclusive of this case, since both in treatises of authoritative writers (Story, Conflict of Law § 609), and by repeated adjudications of VOL. CCX-16 WHITE, HARLAN, MCKENNA and DAY, JJ., dissenting. 210 U. S. this court it has been settled that the purpose of the due faith and credit clause was not to confer any new power, but simply to make obligatory that duty which, when the Constitution was adopted rested, as has been said, in comity alone. Without citing the numerous decisions which so hold, reference is made to a few of the leading cases in which the prior rulings of this court were reviewed, the foregoing principle was stated and the scope of the due faith and credit clause was fully expounded: Thompson v. Whitman, 18 Wall. 457; Wisconsin v. Pelican Insurance Co., 127 U. S. 265; Cole v. Cunningham, 133 U. S. 107; Andrews v. Andrews, 188 U. S. 14. A more particular review of those cases will demonstrate why my conviction is that the decision in this case overrules the cases cited. In Thompson v. Whitman it was directly held that when a judgment of one State is presented for enforcement in another the due faith and credit clause does not deprive the courts of the State in which it is sought to make the judgment effectual from inquiring into the jurisdiction of the court in which the judgment was rendered. In Wisconsin v. Pelican Insurance Co., a judgment was rendered in Wisconsin against an insurance company for a large amount of money. An original suit was brought in this court upon the judgment. Elaborately considering the authorities, it was held that the due faith and credit clause did not deprive the court of the right to go behind the face of the money judgment and ascertain the cause of action upon which it had been rendered. In other words, it was expressly decided that there was power to ascertain whether the cause of action was such as to give the Wisconsin court jurisdiction to render a judgment entitled to enforcement in other States. This having been determined, as the proof established that the judgment for money rendered in Wisconsin was for a penalty imposed by the statutes of that State, it was held that the judgment was not entitled to be enforced, because when the Constitution was framed no State ever enforced the penal laws of another State. Speaking of the grant of jurisdiction over 210 U S. WHITE, HARLAN, MCKENNA and DAY, JJ., dissenting. "controversies between a State and citizen of another State," it was said (p. 289): "The grant is of 'judicial power,' and was not intended to confer upon the courts of the United States jurisdiction of a suit or prosecution by the one State, of such a nature that it could not, on the settled principles of public and international law, be entertained by the judiciary of the other State at all." Certainly if such was the purpose of the framers in regard to the clause referred to, a like purpose must have been intended with reference to the due faith and credit clause. If a judgment for a penalty in money rendered in one State may not be enforced in another, by the same principle a judgment rendered in one State, giving to the party the results of prohibited and criminal acts done in another State, is not entitled to be enforced in the State whose laws have been violated. Nor do I think that the ruling in the Pelican case is at all qualified by a sentence, quoted in the opinion of the court now announced, taken from page 293 of the report of the Pelican case. On the contrary, when that sentence is read, in connection with its context, in my opinion, it has a directly contrary effect to that for which it is now cited. The passage in full is as follows, the sentence referred to in the opinion in this case being the part embraced in brackets as found in the original: "The essential nature and real foundation of a cause of action are not changed by recovering judgment upon it; and the technical rules, which regard the original claim as merged in the judgment, and the judgment as implying a promise by the defendant to pay it, do not preclude a court, to which a judgment is presented for affirmative action [while it cannot go behind the judgment for the purpose of examining into the validity of the claim], from ascertaining whether the claim is really one of such a nature that the court is authorized to enforce it." It seems to me that the words "validity of the claim," used in the sentence in brackets, but pointed out the absence of power when a judgment is one which is entitled to be enforced |