Opinion of the Court.

operation of the Constitution of the United States of a power which must belong to and somewhere reside in every civilized government. This would be but to declare that, in a necessary aspect, government had been destroyed by the adoption of the Constitution. And such result would be reached by holding that a power of local government vested in the States when the Constitution was adopted had been lost to the States, though not delegated to the Federal government, because each State was endowed as a consequence of the adoption of the Constitution with the means of destroying the authority with respect to the dissolution of the marriage tie as to every other State, whilst having no right to save its own power in the premises from annihilation.

But let us consider the particular clause of the Constitution of the United States which is relied upon, in order to ascertain whether such an abnormal and disastrous result can possibly arise from its correct application.

The provision of the Constitution of the United States in question is section 1 of article IV, providing that "Full faith and credit shall be given in each State to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other State." The argument is that, even although the Massachusetts statute but announces a rule of public policy, in a matter purely local, nevertheless it violates this clause of the Constitution. The decree of the court of another State, it is insisted, and not the relation of the parties to the State of Massachusetts and their subjection to its lawful authority, is what the Constitution of the United States considers in requiring the State of Massachusetts to give due faith and credit to the judicial proceedings of the courts of other States. This proposition, however, must rest on the assumption that the Constitution has destroyed those rights of local self-government which it was its purpose to preserve. It, moreover, presupposes that the determination of what powers are reserved and what delegated by the Constitution is to be ascertained by a blind adherence to mere form in disregard of the substance of things. But the settled rule is directly to the contrary. Reasoning from analogy, the unsoundness of the proposition is demonstrated. Thus, in en

Opinion of the Court.

forcing the clause of the Constitution forbidding a State from impairing the obligations of a contract, it is settled by the decisions of this court, although a State, for adequate consideration, may have executed a contract sanctioning the carrying on of a lottery for a stated term, no contract protected from impairment under the Constitution results, because, disregarding the mere form and looking at substance, a State may not, by the application of the contract clause of the Constitution, be shorn of an ever inherent authority to preserve the public morals by suppressing lotteries. Stone v. Mississippi, 101 U. S. 814; Douglas v. Kentucky, 168 U. S. 488. In other words, the doctrine is, that although a particular provision of the Constitution may seemingly be applicable, its controlling effect is limited by the essential nature of the powers of government reserved to the States when the Constitution was adopted. view of the rule thus applied to the contract clause of the Constitution, we could not maintain the claim now made as to the effect of the due faith and credit clause, without saying that the States must, in the nature of things, always possess the power to legislate for the preservation of the morals of society, but that they need not have the continued authority to save society from destruction.

In

Resort to reasoning by analogy, however, is not required, since the principle which has been applied to the contract clause has been likewise enforced as to the due faith and credit clause. In Thompson v. Whitman, (1874) 18 Wall. 457, the action in the court below was trespass for the conversion of a sloop, her tackle, furniture, etc., upon a seizure for an alleged violation of a statute of the State of New Jersey. By special plea in bar the defendant set up that the seizure was made within the limits of a nained county, in the State of New Jersey, and by answer to this plea the plaintiff took issue as to the place of seizure, thus challenging the jurisdiction of the justices who had tried the information and decreed the forfeiture and sale of the property. The precise point involved in the case, as presented in this court, was whether or not error had been committed by the trial court in receiving evidence to contradict the record of the New Jersey judgment as to jurisdictional facts asserted

Opinion of the Court.

therein, and especially as to facts stated to have been passed upon by the court which had rendered the judgment. It was contended that to permit the jurisdictional facts, which were foreclosed by the judgment, to be reëxamined would be a violation of the due faith and credit clause of the Constitution. This court, however, decided to the contrary, saying:

"We think it clear that the jurisdiction of the court by which a judgment is rendered in any State may be questioned in a collateral proceeding in another State, notwithstanding the provision of the fourth article of the Constitution and the law of 1790, and notwithstanding the averments contained in the record of the judgment itself."

The ground upon which this conclusion was predicated is thus embodied in an excerpt made from the opinion delivered by Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, speaking for the court, in Rose v. Himely, 4 Cranch, 241, 269, where it was said:

66

Upon principle, it would seem, that the operation of every judgment must depend on the power of the court to render that judgment; or, in other words, on its jurisdiction over the subject matter which it has determined. In some cases, that jurisdiction, unquestionably, depends as well on the state of the thing, as on the constitution of the court. If, by any means whatever, a prize court should be induced, to condemn, as prize of war, a vessel which was never captured, it could not be contended, that this condemnation operated a change of property. Upon principle, then, it would seem, that, to a certain extent, the capacity of the court to act upon the thing condemned, arising from its being within, or without their jurisdiction, as well as the constitution of the court, may be considered by that tribunal which is to decide on the effect of the sentence."

And the same principle, in a different aspect, was applied in Wisconsin v. Pelican Insurance Co., (1888) 127 U. S. 265. In that case the State of Wisconsin had obtained a money judgment in its own courts against the Pelican Insurance Company, a Louisiana corporation. Availing itself of the original jurisdiction of this court, the State of Wisconsin brought in this court an action of debt upon the judgment in question. The answer of the defendant was to the effect that the judgment

Opinion of the Court.

was not entitled to extra-territorial enforcement, because the claim upon which it was based was a penalty imposed upon the corporation for an alleged violation of the insurance laws of the State of Wisconsin. The answer having been demurred to, it was, of course, conceded that the claim which was merged in the judgment was such a penalty. This court, having concluded that ordinarily a penalty imposed by the laws of one State could have no extra-territorial operation, came then to consider whether, under the due faith and credit clause of the Constitution of the United States, a judgment rendered upon a penal statute was entitled to recognition outside of the State in which it had been rendered, because the character' of the cause of action had been merged in the judgment as such. In declining to enforce the Wisconsin judgment and in deciding that, notwithstanding the judgment and the due faith and credit clause of the Constitution, the power existed to look back of the judgment and ascertain whether the claim which had entered into it was one susceptible of being enforced in another State, the court, speaking through Mr. Justice Gray, said (p. 291):

"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, sec. 1; act of May 26, 1790, chap. 11, 1 Stat. 122; Rev. Stat. § 905.

"Those provisions establish a rule of evidence, rather than of 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

Opinion of the Court.

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 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."

2. When the principles which we have above demonstrated by reason and authority are applied to the question in hand, its solution is free from difficulty. As the State of Massachu