Case Name: NEVADA et al. v. HALL et al.
Court: Supreme Court of the United States
Jurisdiction: United States
Decision Date: 1979-03-05
Citations: 440 U.S. 410
Docket Number: No. 77-1337
Parties: NEVADA et al. v. HALL et al.
Judges: Stevens, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BkenNAN, Stewart, White, Marshall, and Powell, JJ., joined. BlackmtjN, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Burger, C. J., and Rehnquist, J., joined, post, p. 427. Rehnquist, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Burger, C. J., joined, post, p. 432.
Reporter: United States Reports
Volume: 440
Pages: 410–443

Head Matter:
NEVADA et al. v. HALL et al.
No. 77-1337.
Argued November 7, 1978
Decided March 5, 1979
Stevens, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BkenNAN, Stewart, White, Marshall, and Powell, JJ., joined. BlackmtjN, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Burger, C. J., and Rehnquist, J., joined, post, p. 427. Rehnquist, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Burger, C. J., joined, post, p. 432.
Michael W. Dyer, Deputy Attorney General of Nevada, argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the briefs were Robert Frank List, Attorney General, and James H. Thompson, Chief Deputy Attorney General.
Everett P. Rowe argued the cause and filed a brief for respondents.

Opinion:
Mr. Justice Stevens
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In this tort action arising out of an automoble collision in California, a California court has entered a judgment against the State of Nevada that Nevada's own courts could not have entered. We granted certiorari to decide whether federal law prohibits the California courts from entering such'a judgment or, indeed, from asserting any jurisdiction over another sovereign State.
The respondents are California residents. They suffered severe injuries in an automoble collision on a California highway on May 13, 1968. The driver of the other vehicle, an employee of the University of Nevada, was killed in the collision. It is conceded that he was driving a car owned by the State, that he was engaged in official business, and that the University is an instrumentality of the State itself.
Respondents filed this suit for damages in the Superior Court for the city of San Francisco, naming the administrator of the driver's estate, the University, and the State of Nevada as defendants. Process was served on the State and the University pursuant to the provisions of the California Vehicle Code authorizing service of process on nonresident motorists. The trial court granted a motion to quash service on the State, but its order was reversed on appeal. The California Supreme Court held, as a matter of California law, that the State of Nevada was amenable to suit in California courts and remanded the case for trial. Hall v. University of Nevada, 8 Cal. 3d 522, 503 P. 2d 1363. We denied certiorari. 414 U. S. 820.
On remand, Nevada filed a pretrial motion to limit the amount of damages that might be recovered. A Nevada statute places a limit of $25,000 on any award in a tort action against the State pursuant to its statutory waiver of sovereign immunity. Nevada argued that the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the United States Constitution required the California courts to enforce that statute. Nevada's motion was denied, and the case went to trial.
The jury concluded that the Nevada driver was negligent and awarded damages of $1,150,000. The Superior Court entered judgment on the verdict and the Court of Appeal affirmed. After the California Supreme Court denied review, the State of Nevada and its University successfully sought a writ of certiorari. 436 U. S. 925.
Despite its importance, the question whether a State may claim immunity from suit in the courts of another State has never been addressed by this Court. The question is not expressly answered by any provision of the Constitution; Nevada argues that it is implicitly answered by reference to the common understanding that no sovereign is amenable to suit without its consent — an understanding prevalent when the Constitution was framed and repeatedly reflected in this Court's opinions. In order to determine whether that understanding is embodied in the Constitution, as Nevada claims, it is necessary to consider (1) the source and scope of the traditional doctrine of sovereign immunity; (2) the impact of the doctrine on the framing of the Constitution; (3) the Full Faith and Credit Clause; and (4) other aspects of the Constitution that qualify the sovereignty of the several States.
I
The doctrine of sovereign immunity is an amalgam of two quite different concepts, one applicable to suits in the sovereign's own courts and the other to suits in the courts of another sovereign.
The immunity of a truly independent sovereign from suit in its own courts has been enjoyed as a matter of absolute right for centuries. Only the sovereign's own consent could qualify the absolute character of that immunity.
The doctrine, as it developed at common law, had its origins in the feudal system. Describing those origins, Pollock and Maitland noted that no lord could be sued by a vassal in his own court, but each petty lord was subject to suit in the courts of a higher lord. Since the King was at the apex of the feudal pyramid, there was no higher court in which he could be sued. The King's immunity rested primarily on the structure of the feudal system and secondarily on a fiction that the King could do no wrong.
We must, of course, reject the fiction. It was rejected by the colonists when they declared their independence from the Crown, and the record in this case discloses an actual wrong committed by Nevada. But the notion that immunity from suit is an attribute of sovereignty is reflected in our cases.
Mr. Chief Justice Jay described sovereignty as the "right to govern"; that kind of right would necessarily encompass the right to determine what suits may be brought in the sovereign's own courts. Thus, Mr. Justice Holmes explained sover eign immunity as based "on the logical and practical ground that there can be no legal right as against the authority that makes the law on which the right depends."
This explanation adequately supports the conclusion that no sovereign may be sued in its own courts without its consent, but it affords no support for a claim of immunity in another sovereign's courts. Such a claim necessarily implicates the power and authority of a second sovereign; its source must be found either in an agreement, express or implied, between the two sovereigns, or in the voluntary decision of the second to respect the dignity of the first as a matter of comity.
This point was plainly stated by Mr. Chief Justice Marshall in The Schooner Exchange v. McFaddon, 7 Cranch 116, which held that an American court could not assert jurisdiction over a vessel in which Napoleon, the reigning Emperor of France, claimed a sovereign right. In that case, the Chief Justice observed:
"The jurisdiction of courts is a branch of that which is possessed by the nation as an independent sovereign power.
"The jurisdiction of the nation within its own territory is necessarily exclusive and absolute. It is susceptible of no limitation not imposed by itself. Any restriction upon it, deriving validity from an external source, would imply a diminution of its sovereignty to the extent of the restriction, and an investment of that sovereignty to the same extent in that power which could impose such restriction.
"All exceptions, therefore, to the full and complete power of a nation within its own territories, must be traced up to the consent of the nation itself. They can flow from no other legitimate source." Id., at 136.
After noting that the source of any immunity for the French vessel must be found in American law, the Chief Justice interpreted that law as recognizing the common usage among nations in which every sovereign was understood to have waived its exclusive territorial jurisdiction over visiting, sovereigns, or their representatives, in certain classes of cases.
The opinion in The Schooner Exchange makes clear that if California and Nevada were independent and completely sovereign nations, Nevada's claim of immunity from suit in California's courts would be answered by reference to the law of California. It is fair to infer that if the immunity defense Nevada asserts today had been raised in 1812 when The Schooner Exchange was decided, or earlier when the Constitution was being framed, the defense would have been sustained by the California courts. By rejecting the defense in this very case, however, the California courts have told us that whatever California law may have been in the past, it no longer extends immunity to Nevada as a matter of comity.
Nevada quite rightly does not ask us to review the California courts' interpretation of California law. Rather, it argues that California is not free, as a sovereign, to apply its own law, but is bound instead by a federal rule of law implicit in the Constitution that requires all of the States to adhere to the sovereign-immunity doctrine as it prevailed when the Constitution was adopted. Unless such a federal rule exists, we of course have no power to disturb the judgment of the California courts.
II
Unquestionably the doctrine of sovereign immunity was a matter of importance in the early days of independence. Many of the States were heavily indebted as a result of the Revolutionary War. They were vitally interested in the question whether the creation of a new federal sovereign, with courts of its own, would automatically subject them, like lower English lords, to suits in the courts of the "higher" sovereign.
But the question whether one State might be subject to suit in the courts of another State was apparently not a matter of concern when the new Constitution was being drafted and ratified. Regardless of whether the Framers were correct in assuming, as presumably they did, that prevailing notions of comity would provide adequate protection against the unlikely prospect of an attempt by the courts of one State to assert jurisdiction over another, the need for constitutional protection against that contingency was not discussed.
The debate about the suability of the States focused on the scope of the judicial power of the United States authorized by Art. III. In The Federalist, Hamilton took the position that this authorization did not extend to suits brought by an individual against a nonconsenting State. The contrary position was also advocated and actually prevailed in this Court's decision in Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 Dall. 419.
The Chisholm decision led to the prompt adoption of the Eleventh Amendment. That Amendment places explicit limits on the powers of federal courts to entertain suits against a State
The language used by the Court in cases construing these limits, like the language used during the debates on ratification of the Constitution, emphasized the widespread acceptance of the view that a sovereign State is never amenable to suit without its consent. But all of these cases, and all of the relevant debate, concerned questions of federal-court jurisdiction and the extent to which the States, by ratifying the Constitution and creating federal courts, had authorized suits against themselves in those courts. These decisions do not answer the question whether the Constitution places any limit on the exercise of one's State's power to authorize its courts to assert jurisdiction over another State. Nor does anything in Art. Ill authorizing the judicial power of the United States, or in the Eleventh Amendment limitation on that power, provide any basis, explicit or implicit, for this Court to impose limits on the powers of California exercised in this case. A mandate for federal-court enforcement of interstate comity must find its basis elsewhere in the Constitution.
Ill
Nevada claims that the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution requires California to respect the limitations on Nevada's statutory waiver of its immunity from suit. That waiver only gives Nevada's consent to suits in its own courts. Moreover, even if the waiver is treated as a consent to be sued in California, California must honor the condition attached to that consent and limit respondents' recovery to $25,000, the maximum allowable in an action in Nevada's courts.
The Full Faith and Credit Clause does require each State to give effect to official acts of other States. A judgment entered in one State must be respected in another provided that the first State had jurisdiction over the parties and the subject matter. Moreover, in certain limited situations, the courts of one State must apply the statutory law of another State. Thus, in Bradford Electric Co. v. Clapper, 286 U. S. 145, the Court held that a federal court sitting in New Hampshire was required by the Constitution to apply Vermont law in an action between a Vermont employee and a Vermont employer arising out of a contract made in Vermont. But this Court's decision in Pacific Insurance Co. v. Industrial Accident Comm'n, 306 U. S. 493, clearly establishes that the Full Faith and Credit Clause does not require a State to apply another State's law in violation of its own legitimate public policy.
The question in Pacific Insurance was whether the Full Faith and Credit Clause precluded California from applying its own workmen's compensation Act in the case of an injury suffered by a Massachusetts employee of a Massachusetts employer while in California in the course of his employment. Even though the employer and employee had agreed to be bound by Massachusetts law, this Court held that California was not precluded from applying its own law imposing greater responsibilities on the employer. In doing so, the Court reasoned:
"It has often been recognized by this Court that there are some limitations upon the extent to which a state may be required by the full faith and credit clause to enforce even the judgment of another state in contravention of its own statutes or policy. . . . And in the case of statutes, the extrastate effect of which Congress has not prescribed, as it may under the constitutional provision, we think the conclusion is unavoidable that the full faith and credit clause does not require one state to substitute for its own statute, applicable to persons and events within it, the conflicting statute of another state, even though that statute is of controlling force in the courts of the state of its enactment with respect to the same persons and events. . . . Although Massachusetts has an interest in safeguarding the compensation of Massachusetts employees while temporarily abroad in the course of their employment, and may adopt that policy for itself, that could hardly be thought to support an application of the full faith and credit clause which would override the constitutional authority of another state to legislate for the bodily safety and economic protection of employees injured within it. Few matters could be deemed more appropriately the concern of the state in which the injury occurs or more completely within its power." Id., at 502-503.
The Clapper case was distinguished on the ground that "there was nothing in the New Hampshire statute, the decisions of its courts, or in the circumstances of the case, to suggest that reliance on the provisions of the Vermont statute, as a defense to the New Hampshire suit, was obnoxious to the policy of New Hampshire." 306 U. S., at 504. In Pacific Insurance, on the other hand, California had its own scheme governing compensation for injuries in the State, and the California courts had found that the policy of that scheme would be frustrated were it denied enforcement. "Full faith and credit," this Court concluded, "does not here enable one state to legislate for the other or to project its laws across state lines so as to preclude the other from prescribing for itself the legal consequences of acts within it." Id., at 504-505.
A similar conclusion is appropriate in this case. The interest of California afforded such respect in the Pacific Insurance case was in providing for "the bodily safety and economic protection of employees injured within it." Id., at 503. In this case, California's interest is the closely related and equally substantial one of providing "full protection to those who are injured on its highways through the negligence of both residents and nonresidents." App. to Pet. for Cert. vii. To effectuate this interest, California has provided by statute for jurisdiction in its courts over residents and nonresidents alike to allow those injured on its highways through the neligence of others to secure full compensation for their injuries in the California courts.
In further implementation of that policy, California has unequivocally waived its own immunity from liability for the torts committed by its own agents and authorized full recovery even against the sovereign. As the California courts have found, to require California either to surrender jurisdiction or to limit respondents' recovery to the $25,000 maximum of the Nevada statute would be obnoxious to its statutorily based policies of jurisdiction over nonresident motorists and full recovery. The Full Faith and Credit Clause does not require this result.
IV
Even apart from the Full Faith and Credit Clause, Nevada argues that the Constitution implicitly establishes a Union in which the States are not free to treat each other as unfriendly sovereigns, but must respect the sovereignty of one another. While sovereign nations are free to levy discriminatory taxes on the goods of other nations or to bar their entry altogether, the States of the Union are not. Nor are the States free to deny extradition of a fugitive when a proper demand is made by the executive of another State. And the citizens in each State are entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.
Each of these provisions places a specific limitation on the sovereignty of the several States. Collectively they demonstrate that ours is not a union of 50 wholly independent sovereigns. But these provisions do not imply that any one State's immunity from suit in the courts of another State is anything other than a matter of comity. Indeed, in view of the Tenth Amendment's reminder that powers not delegated to the Federal Government nor prohibited to the States are reserved to the States or to the people, the existence of express limitations on state sovereignty may equally imply that caution should be exercised before concluding that unstated limitations on state power were intended by the Framers.
In the past, this Court has presumed that the States intended to adopt policies of broad comity toward one another. But this presumption reflected an understanding of state policy, rather than a constitutional command. As this Court stated in Bank of Augusta v. Earle, 13 Pet. 519, 590:
"The intimate union of these states, as members of the same great political family; the deep and vital interests which bind them so closely together; should lead us, in the absence of proof to the contrary, to presume a greater degree of comity, and friendship, and kindness towards one another, than we should be authorized to presume between foreign nations. And when (as without doubt must occasionally happen) the interest or policy of any state requires it to restrict the rule, it has but to declare its will, and the legal presumption is at once at an end."
In this case, California has "declared its will"; it has adopted as its policy full compensation in its courts for injuries on its highways resulting from the negligence of others, whether those others be residents or nonresidents, agents of the State, or private citizens. Nothing in the Federal Constitution authorizes or obligates this Court to frustrate that policy out of enforced respect for the sovereignty of Nevada.
In this Nation each sovereign governs only with the consent of the governed. The people of Nevada have consented to a system in which their State is subject only to limited liability in tort. But the people of California, who have had no voice in Nevada's decision, have adopted a different system. Each of these decisions is equally entitled to our respect.
It may be wise policy, as a matter of harmonious interstate relations, for States to accord each other immunity or to respect any established limits on liability. They are free to do so. But if a federal court were to hold, by inference from the structure of our Constitution and nothing else, that California is not free in this case to enforce its policy of full compensation, that holding would constitute the real intru sion on the sovereignty of the States — and the power of the people — in our Union.
The judgment of the California Court of Appeal is
Affirmed.
Section 17451 of the Code provides:
"The acceptance by a nonresident of the rights and privileges conferred upon him by this code or any operation by himself or agent of a motor vehicle anywhere within this state, or in the event the nonresident is the owner of a motor vehicle then by the operation of the vehicle anywhere within this state by any person with his express or implied permission, is equivalent to an appointment by the nonresident of the director or his successor in office to be his true and lawful attorney upon whom may be served all lawful processes in any action or proceeding against the nonresident operator or nonresident owner growing out of any accident or collision resulting from the operation of any motor vehicle anywhere within this state by himself or agent, which appointment shall also be irrevocable and binding upon his executor or administrator." Cal. Veh. Code Ann. § 17451 (West 1971).
An administrator of the decedent's estate was appointed in California and was served personally.
Nev. Rev. Stat. §41.035 (1) as it existed in 1968, found in official edition, 1965 Nev. Stats., p. 1414 (later amended by 1968 Nev. Stats., p. 44, 1973 Nev. Stats., p. 1532, and 1977 Nev. Stats, pp. 985, 1539):
"No award for damages in an action sounding in tort brought under section 2 may exceed the sum of $25,000 to or for the benefit of any claimant. No such award may include any amount as exemplary or punitive damages or as interest prior to judgment."
Nev. Rev. Stat. § 41.031 (1977):
"1. The State of Nevada hereby waives its immunity from liability and action and hereby consents to have its liability determined in accordance with the same rules of law as are applied to civil actions against natural persons and corporations, except as otherwise provided in NRS 41.032 to 41.038, inclusive, and subsection 3 of this section, if the claimant complies with the limitations of NRS 41.032 to 41.036, inclusive, or the limitations of the NRS 41.010. The State of Nevada further waives the immunity from liability and action of all political subdivisions of the state, and their liability shall be determined in the same manner, except as otherwise provided in NRS 41.032 to 41.038, inclusive, and subsection 3 of this section, if the claimant complies with the limitations of NRS 41.032 to 41.036, inclusive.
"2. An action may be brought under this section, in a court of competent jurisdiction of this state, against the State of Nevada, any agency of the state, or any political subdivision of the state. In an action against the state or any agency of the state, the State of Nevada shall be named as defendant, and the summons and a copy of the complaint shall be served upon the secretary of state."
Article IV, § 1, provides:
"Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof."
The evidence indicated that respondent John Hall, a minor at the time of the accident, sustained severe head injuries resulting in permanent brain damage which left him severely retarded and-unable to care for himself, and that respondent Patricia Hall, his mother, suffered severe physical and emotional injuries.
No one claims that any federal statute places any relevant restriction on California's jurisdiction or lends any support to Nevada's claim of immunity. If there is a federal rule that restricts California's exercise of jurisdiction in this case, that restriction must be a part of the United States Constitution.
See 1 F. Pollock & F. Maitland, History of English Law 518 (2d ed. 1899) ("He can not be compelled to answer in his own court, but this is true of every petty lord of every petty manor; that there happens to be in this world no court above his court is, we may say, an accident"); Engdahl, Immunity and Accountability for Positive Governmental Wrongs, 44 U. Colo. L. Rev. 1, 2-5 (1972).
See 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *246 ("The king, moreover, is not only incapable of doing wrong, but even of thinking wrong; he can never mean to do an improper thing"). In fact, however, effective mechanisms developed early in England to redress injuries resulting from the wrongs of the King. See Jaffe, Suits Against Governments and Officers: Sovereign Immunity, 77 Harv. L. Rev. 1, 3-5 (1963).
The Declaration of Independence proclaims:
"[T]hat whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government . . . and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states."
See generally B. Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution 198-229 (1967).
See Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 Dall. 419, 472.
See Kawananakoa v. Polyblank, 205 U. S. 349, 353.
The opinion describes the exemption of the person of the sovereign from arrest or detention in a foreign territory, the immunity allowed to foreign ministers, and the passage of troops through a country with its permission. 7 Cranch, at 137-140.
Were it an independent sovereign, Nevada might choose to withdraw its money from California banks, or to readjust its own rules as to California's amenability to suit in the Nevada courts. And it might refuse to aEow this judgment to be enforced in its courts. But it could not, absent California's consent and absent whatever protection is conferred by the United States Constitution, invoke any higher authority to enforce rules of interstate comity and to stop California from asserting jurisdiction. For to do so would be wholly at odds with the sovereignty of California.
Such a defense was sustained in 1929 by the Supreme Court of North Dakota in Paulus v. South Dakota, 58 N. D. 643, 647-649, 227 N. W. 52, 54-55. The States' practice of waiving sovereign immunity in their own courts is a relatively recent development; it was only last year, for example, that Pennsylvania concluded that the defense would no longer be recognized, at least in certain circumstances, in that State. See Mayle v. Pennsylvania Dept. of Highways, 479 Pa. 382, 388 A. 2d 709 (1978); 1978 Pa. Laws, Act. No. 1978-152, to be codified as 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 5101, 5110. But as States have begun to waive their rights to immunity in their own courts, it was only to be expected that the privilege of immunity afforded to other States as a matter of comity would be subject to question.
Similarly, as concern for redress of individual injuries has enhanced, so too have moves toward the reappraisal of the practices of sovereign nations according absolute immunity to foreign sovereigns. The governing rule today, in many nations, is one of restrictive rather than absolute immunity. See 26 Dept. State Bull. 984 (1952); Note, The Jurisdictional Immunity of Foreign Sovereigns, 63 Yale L. J. 1148 (1954); Martiniak, Hall v. Nevada: State Court Jurisdiction Over Sister States v. American State Sovereign Immunity, 63 Calif. L. Rev. 1144, 1155-1157 (1975).
See generally C. Jacobs, The Eleventh Amendment and Sovereign Immunity 1-40 (1972).
Article III provides, in relevant part:
"Section 1. The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. . . .
"Section 2. The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority . to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party; — to Controversies between two or more States; — between a State and Citizens of another State; — between Citizens of different States; — between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects."
The Federalist No. 81, p. 508 (H. Lodge ed. 1908) (A. Hamilton) ("It is inherent in the nature of sovereignty not to be amenable to the suit of an individual without its consent"); see 3 J. Elliot, Debates on the Federal Constitution 555 (1876) (John Marshall) ("I hope that no gentleman will think that a state will be called at the bar of the federal court. . . . The intent is, to enable states to recover claims of individuals residing in other states. I contend this construction is warranted by the words"). Id., at 533 (James Madison).
See 2 id., at 491 (James Wilson) ("When a citizen has a controversy with another state, there ought to be a tribunal where both parties may stand on a just and equal footing"); Jacobs, supra n. 14, at 40 ("[T]he legislative history of the Constitution hardly warrants the conclusion drawn by some that there was a general understanding, at the time of ratification, that the states would retain their sovereign immunity").
See Hans v. Louisiana, 134 U. S. 1, 11; Monaco v. Mississippi, 292 U. S. 313, 325.
The Eleventh Amendment provides:
"The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State."
Even as so limited, however, the Eleventh Amendment has not accorded the States absolute sovereign immunity in federal-court actions. The States are subject to suit by both their sister States and the United States. See, e. g., North Dakota v. Minnesota, 263 U. S. 365, 372; United States v. Mississippi, 380 U. S. 128, 140-141. Further, prospective injunctive and declaratory relief is available against States in suits in federal court in which state officials are the nominal defendants. See Ex parte Young, 209 U. S. 123; Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U. S. 651. See generally Baker, Federalism and the Eleventh Amendment, 48 U. Colo. L. Rev. 139 (1977).
See, e. g., Hans v. Louisiana, supra, at 18 ("The state courts have no power to entertain suits by individuals against a state without its consent. Then how does the Circuit Court, having only concurrent jurisdiction, acquire any such power?"); Monaco v. Mississippi, supra, at 322-323 ("There is also the postulate that States of the Union, still possessing attributes of sovereignty, shall be immune from suits, without their consent, save where there has been 'a surrender of this immunity in the plan of the convention' ").
Mr. Justice Stone concurred in the Clapper decision, expressing the view that the result was supported by the conflict-of-laws rule that a New Hampshire court could be expected to apply in this situation, and that it was unnecessary to rely on the Constitution to support the Court's judgment. He also made it clear that the rule of the case did not encompass an action in which the source of the relationship was not a Vermont contract between a Vermont employer and a Vermont employee. 286 U. S., at 163-165.
See also Alaska Packers Assn. v. Industrial Accident Comm'n, 294 U. S. 532; Bonaparte v. Tax Court, 104 U. S. 592 (holding that a law exempting certain bonds of the enacting State from taxation did not apply extraterritorially by virtue of the Full Faith and Credit Clause).
Mr. Justice Stone who had concurred separately in Clapper, see n. 21, supra, wrote for the Court in Pacific Insurance. After distinguishing Clapper, he limited its holding to its facts:
"The Clapper case cannot be said to have decided more than that a state statute applicable to employer and employee within the state, which by its terms provides compensation for the employee if he is injured in the course of his employment while temporarily in another state, will be given full faith and credit in the latter when not obnoxious to its policy." 306 U. S., at 504.
California's exercise of jurisdiction in this case poses no substantial threat to our constitutional system of cooperative federalism. Suits involving traffic accidents occurring outside of Nevada could hardly interfere with Nevada's capacity to fulfill its own sovereign responsibilities. We have no occasion, in this case, to consider whether different state policies, either of California or of Nevada, might require a different analysis or a different result.
See U. S. Const., Art. I, § 8.
Art. IV, § 2.
Ibid.
The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Cf. Georgia v. Chattanooga, 264 U. S. 472, 480 ("Land acquired by one State in another State is held subject to the laws of the latter and to all the incidents of private ownership. The proprietary right of the owning State does not restrict or modify the power of eminent domain of the State wherein the land is situated").