§ 92. Congressional Legislation.

By a law passed in 1790 Congress provided: "That the acts of the legislature of the several States shall be authenticated by having the seal of their respective States affixed thereto; that the records and judicial proceedings of the courts of any State shall be proved or admitted in any court within the United States by the attestation of the clerk, and the seal of the court annexed, if there be a seal, together with a certificate of the judge, chief justice, or presiding magistrate, as the case may be, that the said attestation is in due form. And the said records and judicial proceedings authenticated as aforesaid shall have such faith and credit given to them in every court within the United States, as they have by law or usage in the courts of the State from whence the said records are or shall be taken." 2

In 1809 this act was supplemented by one which, after providing for the authentication of other than judicial records, declared, in its second section: "And be it further enacted, that all the provisions of this act, and the act to which this is a supplement [Act of 1790] shall apply as well as to the public acts, records, office books, judicial proceedings, courts, and offices of the respective territories of the United States and countries subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, as to the public acts, records, office books, judicial proceedings, courts and officers of the several States." 3

In Mills v. Duryee decided in 1813, the Supreme Court, construing these acts held that by them Congress had not only provided for the admission of authenticated judgments of a State as evidence in the courts of the other States in the Union, but that it had, in execution of the constitutional provision, declared that they should be conclusive evidence of all matters properly adjudicated therein.

21 U. S. Stat. at L. 122.

32 U. S. Stat. at L. 298. These two sections are united in section 905 of the Revised Statutes. In a law enacted in 1895 it is provided by Congress that: "The pamphlet copies of the statutes and the bound copies of the Acts of each Congress shall be legal evidence of the laws therein contained in all the courts of the United States and of the several States therein." Section 73, Act of Jan. 2, Ch. 23 (28 Stat. at L. 601).

47 Cr. 481; 3 L. ed. 411.

This full faith and credit clause, it is to be observed, has reference only to the States, and not to the Territories or to the District of Columbia. Therefore it has been decided that the act of 1804, in as far as it has reference to the Territories and to the District of Columbia, rests, for its constitutionality, upon other clauses of the Constitution. Thus in Embry v. Palmer the court say: "So far as this statutory provision relates to the effect to be given to the judicial proceedings of the States, it is founded on article IV, section I, of the Constitution, which, however, does not extend to the other cases covered by the statute. The power to prescribe what effect shall be given to the judicial proceedings of the courts of the United States is conferred by other provisions of the Constitution, such as those which declare the extent of the judicial power of the United States, which authorize all legisla tion necessary and proper for executing the powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof, and which declare the supremacy of the authority of the National Government within the limits of the Constitution. As part of its general authority, the power to give effect to the judgments of its courts is co-extensive with its territorial jurisdiction. That the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia is a court of the United States, results from the right which the Constitution has given to Congress of exclusive legislation over the District. Accordingly, the judgments of the courts of the United States have invariably been recognized as upon the same footing, so far as concerns the obligation created by them, with domestic judgments of the States, wherever rendered and wherever sought to be enforced."

The same reasoning that in Embry v. Palmer seems to support the power of Congress to give to judgments rendered in the District of Columbia full force and credit in the States, is sufficient to support its power to give equal force in the States to judgments rendered in the Territories and insular possessions of the United States, and vice versa as to state judgments sued upon in the Territories or in the insular possessions.

5 107 U. S. 3; 2 Sup. Ct. Rep. 25; 27 L. ed. 346.

§ 93. Federal Judgments and Decrees.

In numerous cases it has been held that full force and credit is to be given to judgments of federal courts obtained in one State or Territory when sought to be enforced in the federal courts in another State or Territory, or the District of Columbia. This is due to the fact that, as the Supreme Court say in Claflin v. Houseman, "The United States is not a foreign sovereignty as regards the several States, but is a concurrent, and, within its jurisdiction, a paramount sovereignty. Every citizen of a State is a subject of two distinct sovereignties, having concurrent jurisdiction in the State, concurrent as to place and persons, though distinct as to subject-matter. Legal or equitable rights, acquired under either system of laws, may be enforced in any court of either sovereignty competent to hear and determine such kinds of rights and not restrained by its Constitution in the exercise of such jurisdiction. Thus, a legal or equitable right acquired under state laws may be prosecuted in the state courts, and also, if the parties reside in different States, in the federal courts. So rights, whether legal or equitable, acquired under the laws of the United States, may be prosecuted in the United States courts, or in the state courts, competent to decide rights of the like character and class; subject, however, to this qualification, that where a right arises under a law of the United States, Congress may, if it sees fit, give to the federal courts exclusive jurisdiction.”

§ 94. Full Faith and Credit Clause Applies only to Civil Judgments and Decrees.

It seems scarcely necessary to say that the "full force and credit" clause has reference only to civil judgments. No State, it has been held, is by this provision compelled to lend its aid in the enforcement of the penal laws of another. This was definitely determined in Wisconsin v. Pelican Insurance Company. In this case original suit had been brought in the Supreme Court of the United States by the State of Wisconsin upon

693 U. S. 130; 23 L. ed. 833.

7127 U. S. 265; 8 Sup. Ct. Rep. 1370; 32 L. ed. 239.

a judgment obtained in its own courts against an insurance company, a Louisiana corporation, for penalties imposed by a statute of Wisconsin for not making returns to the insurance commissioners of the State. The federal court held that the grant to it of original jurisdiction in suits between a State and citizens of another State, though given in general terms, was not to be construed to extend to actions brought by a State to enforce even indirectly in another jurisdiction a provision of its own penal law. The court say: "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. . The rules 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."

§ 95. Full Faith and Credit Clause Establishes a Rule of Evidence.

The application of the foregoing rule, the court go on to say, is not affected by the full faith and credit clause. That clause, and the acts of Congress under it, it is declared, 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 other respect than in not being re-examinable on their merits, nor impeachable for a fraud in obtaining them, if rendered by a court having jurisdiction of the cause and of the parties. In the words of Justice Story, '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 does 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." "

As being simply evidence, judgments of the courts of one State, when sued upon in another State, are subject, as regards procedure and remedies, to the law of the latter State. For example, the statute of limitations of the State where suit is brought is applied even though it provides a shorter term of years than that existing in the State in which the judgment was originally obtained.8

It has been held in numerous cases that each State of the Union may enforce in its own courts which have jurisdiction of the parties and subject-matters, civil rights of action depending solely upon the statutes of another State, provided there be no local policy of the forum inconsistent therewith. Thus in Dennick v. Central R. R. Co. with reference to a suit for damages brought in New York under an act of New Jersey, the court say: "It is scarcely contended that the act belongs to the class of criminal laws which can only be enforced by the courts of the State where the offense was committed, for it is, though a statutory remedy,

8 McElmoyle v. Cohen, 13 Pet. 312; 10 L. ed. 177; Bacon v. Howard, 20 How. 22; 15 L. ed. 811.

9103 U. S. 11; 26 L. ed. 439.