Opinion of the Court.

plied to this court in the exercise of its original jurisdiction for a writ of mandamus to the governor of Ohio to compel him to surrender a fugitive from justice, this court, while holding that the case was a controversy between two States, decided that it had no authority to grant the writ. And in New Hampshire v. Louisiana and New York v. Louisiana, 108 U. S. 76, it was adjudged that a State, to whom, pursuant to her statutes, some of her citizens, holding bonds of another State, had assigned them in order to enable her to sue on and collect them for the benefit of the assignors, could not maintain a suit against the other State in this court. See also Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 5 Pet. 1, 20, 28, 51, 75.

In South Carolina v. Georgia, 93 U. S. 4, this court, speaking by Mr. Justice Strong, left the question open, whether “a State, when suing in this court for the prevention of a nuisance in a navigable river of the United States, must not aver and show that it will sustain some special and peculiar injury therefrom, such as would enable a private person to maintain a similar action in another court;" and dismissed the bill, because no unlawful obstruction of navigation was proved. 93 U. S. 14.

As to "controversies between a State and citizens of another State." The object of vesting in the courts of the United States jurisdiction of suits by one State against the citizens of another was to enable such controversies to be determined by a national tribunal, and thereby to avoid the partiality, or suspicion of partiality, which might exist if the plaintiff State were compelled to resort to the courts of the State of which the defendants were citizens. Federalist, No. 80; Chief Justice Jay, in Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 Dall. 419, 475; Story on the Constitution, $ 1638, 1682. 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.

By the law of England and of the United States, the penal laws of a country do not reach beyond its own territory,

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except when extended by express treaty or statute to offences committed abroad by its own citizens; and they must be administered in its own courts only, and cannot be enforced by the courts of another country. Wheaton's International Law (8th ed.) $ 113, 121.

Chief Justice Marshall stated the rule in the most condensed form, as an incontrovertible maxim, "The courts of no country execute the penal laws of another." The Antelope, 10 Wheat. 66, 123.

The only cases in which the courts of the United States have entertained suits by a foreign State have been to enforce demands of a strictly civil nature. The Sapphire, 11 Wall. 164; King of Spain v. Oliver, 2 Wash. C. C. 429, and Pet. C. C. 217, 276. The case of The Sapphire was a libel in admiralty, filed by the late Emperor of the French, and prosecuted by the French Republic after his deposition, to recover damages for a collision between an American ship and a French transport; and Mr. Justice Bradley, delivering the judgment of this court sustaining the suit, said: “A foreign sovereign, as well as any other foreign person, who has a demand of a civil nature against any person here, may prosecute it in our courts." 11 Wall. 167. The case of The King of Spain v. Oliver, although a suit to recover duties imposed by the revenue laws of Spain, was not founded upon those laws, or brought against a person who had broken them, but was in the nature of an action of assumpsit against other persons alleged to be bound by their own contract to pay the duties; and the action failed because no express or implied contract of the defendants was proved. Pet. C. C. 286, 290.

The rule that the courts of no country execute the penal laws of another applies not only to prosecutions and sentences for crimes and misdemeanors, but to all suits in favor of the State for the recovery of pecuniary penalties for any violation of statutes for the protection of its revenue, or other municipal laws, and to all judgments for such penalties. If this were not so, all that would be necessary to give ubiquitous effect to a penal law would be to put the claim for a penalty into the shape of a judgment. Wharton's Conflict of Laws, § 833;

Opinion of the Court.

Westlake's International Law (1st ed.), § 388; Piggott on Foreign Judgments, 209, 210.

Lord Kames, in his Principles of Equity, cited and approved by Mr. Justice Story in his Commentaries on the Conflict of Laws, after having said, "The proper place for punishment is where the crime is committed, and no society takes concern in any crime but what is hurtful to itself;" and recognizing the duty to enforce foreign judgments or decrees for civil debts or damages; adds, "But this includes not a decree decerning for a penalty; because no court reckons itself bound to punish, or to concur in punishing, any delict committed extra territorium." 2 Kames on Equity (3d ed.) 326, 366; Story's Conflict of Laws, §§ 600, 622.

It is true that if the prosecution in the courts of one country for a violation of its municipal law is in rem, to obtain a forfeiture of specific property within its jurisdiction, a judgment of forfeiture, rendered after due notice, and vesting the title of the property in the State, will be recognized and upheld in the courts of any other country in which the title to the property is brought in issue. Rose v. Himely, 4 Cranch, 241; Hudson v. Guestier, 4 Cranch, 293; Bradstreet v. Neptune Ins. Co., 3 Sumner, 600, 605; Pigott on Foreign Judgments, 264. But the recognition of a vested title in property is quite different from the enforcement of a claim for a pecuniary penalty. In the one case, a complete title in the property has been acquired by the foreign judgment; in the other, further judicial action is sought to compel the payment by the defendant to the plaintiff of money in which the plaintiff has not as yet acquired any specific right.

The application of the rule to the courts of the several States and of the United States is not affected by the provisions of the Constitution and of the act of Congress, by which the judgments of the courts of any State are to have such faith and credit given to them in every court within the United States as they have by law or usage in the State in which they were rendered. Constitution, art. 4, sect. 1; Act of May 26, 1790, c. 11, 1 Stat. 122; Rev. Stat. § 905.

Those provisions establish a rule of evidence, rather than of

Opinion of the Court.

jurisdiction. While they make the record of a judgment, rendered after due notice in one State, conclusive evidence in the courts of another State, or of the United States, of the matter adjudged, they do not affect the jurisdiction, either of the court in which the judgment is rendered, or of the court in which it is offered in evidence. Judgments recovered in one State of the Union, when proved in the courts of another government, whether state or national, within the United States, differ from judgments recovered in a foreign country in no other respect than in not being reëxaminable on their merits, nor impeachable for fraud in obtaining them, if rendered by a court having jurisdiction of the cause and of the parties. Hanley v. Donoghue, 116 U. S. 1, 4.

In the words of Mr. Justice Story, cited and approved by Mr. Justice Bradley speaking for this court, "The Constitution did not mean to confer any new power upon the States, but simply to regulate the effect of their acknowledged jurisdiction over persons and things within their territory. It did not make the judgments of other States domestic judgments to all intents and purposes, but only gave a general validity, faith and credit to them as evidence. No execution can issue upon such judgments without a new suit in the tribunals of other States. And they enjoy not the right of priority or lien which they have in the State where they are pronounced, but that only which the lex fori gives to them by its own laws in their character of foreign judgments." Story's Conflict of Laws, § 609; Thompson v. Whitman, 18 Wall. 457, 462, 463.

A judgment recovered in one State, as was said by Mr. Justice Wayne, delivering an earlier judgment of this court, "does not carry with it, into another State, the efficacy of a judgment upon property or persons, to be enforced by execution. To give it the force of a judgment in another State, it must be made a judgment there; and can only be executed in the latter as its laws may permit." McElmoyle v. Cohen, 13 Pet. 312, 325.

The essential nature and real foundation of a cause of action are not changed by recovering judgment upon it; and the

Opinion of the Court.

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 judg ment 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. Louisiana v. New Orleans, 109 U. S. 285, 288, 291; Louisiana v, St. Martin's Parish, 111 U. S. 716; Chase v. Curtis, 113 U. S. 452, 464; Boynton v. Ball, 121 U. S. 457, 466.

The only cases cited in the learned argument for the plaintiff, which tend to support the view that the courts of one State will maintain an action upon a judgment rendered in another State for a penalty incurred by a violation of her municipal laws, are Spencer v. Brockway, 1 Ohio, 259, in which an action was sustained in Ohio upon a judgment rendered in Connecticut upon a forfeited recognizance to answer for a violation of the penal laws of that State; Healy v. Root, 11 Pick. 389, in which an action was sustained in Massachusetts upon a judgment rendered in Pennsylvania in a qui tam action on a penal statute for usury; and Indiana v. Helmer, 21 Iowa, 370, in which an action by the State of Indiana was sustained in the courts of Iowa upon a judgment rendered in Indiana in a prosecution for the maintenance of a bastard child.

The decision in each of those cases appears to have been mainly based upon the supposed effect of the provisions of the Constitution and the act of Congress as to the faith and credit due to a judgment rendered in another State, which had not then received a full exposition from this court; and the other reasons assigned are not such as to induce us to accept those decisions as satisfactory precedents to guide our judgment in the present case.

From the first organization of the courts of the United States, nearly a century ago, it has always been assumed that the original jurisdiction of this court over controversies between a State and citizens of another State, or of a foreign