Opinion of the Court. are distinguished by the harsher appellation of crimes and misdemeanors." 3 Bl. Com. 2. Laws have no force of themselves beyond the jurisdiction of the State which enacts them, and can have extra-territorial effect only by the comity of other States. The general rules of international comity upon this subject were well summed up, before the American Revolution, by Chief Justice De Grey, as reported by Sir William Blackstone: "Crimes are in their nature local, and the jurisdiction of crimes is local. And so as to the rights of real property, the subject being fixed and immovable. But personal injuries are of a transitory nature, and sequuntur forum rei." Rafael v. Verelst, 2 W. Bl. 1055, 1058. Crimes and offences against the laws of any State can only be defined, prosecuted and pardoned by the sovereign authority of that State; and the authorities, legislative, executive or judicial, of other States take no action with regard to them, except by way of extradition to surrender offenders to the State whose laws they have violated, and whose peace they have broken. Proceedings in rem to determine the title to land must necessarily be brought in the State within whose borders the land is situated, and whose courts and officers alone can put the party in possession. Whether actions to recover pecuniary damages for trespasses to real estate, "of which the causes," as observed by Mr. Westlake (Private International Law, 3d ed. p. 213), "could not have occurred elsewhere than where they did occur," are purely local, or may be brought abroad, depends upon the question whether they are viewed as relating to the real estate, or only as affording a personal remedy. By the common law of England, adopted in most of the States of the Union, such actions are regarded as local, and can be brought only where the land is situated. Doulson v. Matthews, 4 T. R. 503; McKenna v. Fisk, 1 How. 241, 248. But in some States and countries they are regarded as transitory, like other personal actions; and whether an action for trespass to land in one State can be brought in another State depends on the view which the latter State takes of the Opinion of the Court. nature of the action. For instance, Chief Justice Marshall held that an action could not be maintained in Virginia, by whose law it was local, for a trespass to land in New Orleans. Livingston v. Jefferson, 1 Brock. 203. On the other hand, an action for a trespass to land in Illinois, where the rule of the common law prevailed, was maintained in Louisiana, Chief Justice Eustis saying: "The present action is, under our laws, a personal action, and is not distinguished from any ordinary civil action as to the place or tribunal in which it may be brought." Holmes v. Barclay, 4 La. Ann. 63. And in a very recent English case, in which the judges differed in opinion upon the question whether, since local venue has been abolished in England, an action can be maintained there for a trespass to land in a foreign country, all agreed that this question depended on the law of England. Companhia de Mocambique v. British South Africa Co. (1892) 2 Q. B. 358. See also Cragin v. Lovell, 88 N. Y. 258; Allin v. Connecticut River Lumber Co., 150 Mass. 560. In order to maintain an action for an injury to the person or to movable property, some courts have held that the wrong must be one which would be actionable by the law of the place where the redress is sought, as well as by the law of the place where the wrong was done. See, for example, The Halley, L. R. 2 P. C. 193, 204; Phillips v. Eyre, L. R. 6 Q. B. 1, 28, 29; The M. Moxham, 1 P. D. 107, 111; Wooden v. Western New York & Pennsylvania Railroad, 126 N. Y. 10; Ash v. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, 72 Maryland, 144. But such is not the law of this court. By our law, a private action may be maintained in one State, if not contrary to its own policy, for such a wrong done in another and actionable there, although a like wrong would not be actionable in the State where the suit is brought. Smith v. Condry, 1 How. 28; The China, 7 Wall. 53, 64; The Scotland, 105 U. S. 24, 29; Dennick v. Railroad Co., 103 U. S. 11; Texas & Pacific Railway v. Cox, 145 U. S. 593. Upon the question what are to be considered penal laws of one country, within the international rule which forbids such laws to be enforced in any other country, so much reliance Opinion of the Court. was placed by each party in argument upon the opinion of this court in Wisconsin v. Pelican Ins. Co., 127 U. S. 265, that it will be convenient to quote from that opinion the principal propositions there affirmed: "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.” p. 290. "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." p. 291. "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." pp. 292, 293. "The statute of Wisconsin, under which the State recovered in one of her own courts the judgment now and here sued on, was in the strictest sense a penal statute, imposing a penalty upon any insurance company of another State, doing business in the State of Wisconsin without having deposited with the proper officer of the State a full statement of its property and business during the previous year. The cause of action was not any private injury, but solely the offence committed against the State by violating her law. The prosecution was in the name of the State, and the whole penalty, when recovered, would accrue to the State." p. 299. Opinion of the Court. Such were the grounds upon which it was adjudged in that case that this court, under the provision of the Constitution giving it original jurisdiction of actions between a State and citizens of another State, had no jurisdiction of an action by a State upon a judgment recovered by it in one of its own courts against a citizen or a corporation of another State for a pecuniary penalty for a violation of its municipal law. Upon similar grounds, the courts of a State cannot be compelled to take jurisdiction of a suit to recover a like penalty for a violation of a law of the United States. Martin v. Hunter, 1 Wheat. 304, 330, 337; United States v. Lathrop, 17 Johns. 4, 265; Delafield v. Illinois, 2 Hill (N. Y.) 159, 169; Jackson v. Rose, 2 Virg. Cas. 34; Ely v. Peck, 7 Conn. 239; Davison v. Champlin, 7 Conn. 244; Haney v. Sharp, 1 Dana, 442; State v. Pike, 15 N. H. 83, 85; Ward v. Jenkins, 10 Met. 583, 587; 1 Kent Com. 402-404. The only ground ever suggested for maintaining such suits in a state court is that the laws of the United States are in effect laws of each State. Claflin v. Houseman, 93 U. S. 130, 137; Platt, J., in United States v. Lathrop, 17 Johns. 22; Ordway v. Central Bank, 47 Maryland, 217. But in Claflin v. Houseman the point adjudged was that an assignee under the bankrupt law of the United States could assert in a state court the title vested in him by the assignment in bankruptcy; and Mr. Justice Bradley, who delivered the opinion in that case, said the year before, when sitting in the Circuit Court, and speaking of a prosecution in a court of the State of Georgia for perjury committed in that State in testifying before a commissioner of the Circuit Court of the United States, "It would be a manifest incongruity for one sovereignty to punish a person for an offence committed against the laws of another sovereignty." Ex parte Bridges, 2 Woods, 428, 430. See also Loney's case, 134 U. S. 372. Beyond doubt, (except in cases removed from a state court in obedience to an express act of Congress in order to protect rights under the Constitution and laws of the United States,) a Circuit Court of the United States cannot entertain jurisdiction of a suit in behalf of the State, or of the people thereof, Opinion of the Court. to recover a penalty imposed by way of punishment for a violation of a statute of the State, "the courts of the United States," as observed by Mr. Justice Catron, delivering a judg ment of this court, "having no power to execute the penal laws of the individual States." Gwin v. Breedlove, 2 How. 29, 36, 37; Gwin v. Barton, 6 How. 7; Iowa v. Chicago &c. Railway, 37 Fed. Rep. 497; Ferguson v. Ross, 38 Fed. Rep. 161; Texas v. Day Land & Cattle Co., 41 Fed. Rep. 228; Dey v. Chicago &c. Railway, 45 Fed. Rep. 82. For the purposes of extra-territorial jurisdiction, it may well be that actions by a common informer, called, as Blackstone says, "popular actions, because they are given to the people in general," to recover a penalty imposed by statute for an offence against the law, and which may be barred by a pardon granted before action brought, may stand on the same ground as suits brought for such a penalty in the name of the State or of its officers, because they are equally brought to enforce the criminal law of the State. 3 Bl. Com. 161, 162; 2 Bl. Com. 437, 438; Adams v. Woods, 2 Cranch, 336; Gwin v. Breedlove, above cited; United States v. Connor, 138 U. S. 61, 66; Bryant v. Ela, Smith (N. H.) 396. And personal disabilities imposed by the law of a State, as an incident or consequence of a judicial sentence or decree, by way of punishment of an offender, and not for the benefit of any other person such as attainder, or infamy, or incompetency of a convict to testify, or disqualification of the guilty party to a cause of divorce for adultery to marry again—are doubtless strictly penal, and therefore have no extra-territorial operation. Story on Conflict of Laws, §§ 91, 92; Dicey on Domicil, 162; Folliott v. Ogden, 1 H. Bl. 123, and 3 T. R. 726; Logan v. United States, 144 U. S. 263, 303; Dickson v. Dickson, 1 Yerger, 110; Ponsford v. Johnson, 2 Blatchford, 15; Commonwealth v. Lane, 113 Mass. 458, 471; Van Voorhis v. Brintnall, 86 N. Y. 18, 28, 29. The question whether a statute of one State, which in some aspects may be called penal, is a penal law in the international sense, so that it cannot be enforced in the courts of another State, depends upon the question whether its purpose is to VOL. CXLVI-43 |