Opinion ID: 103736
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: our function in the matter.

Text: There is confided to the Court only the power to resolve constitutional questions raised by these divorce procedures, and not moral, religious, or social questions as to divorce itself. I do not know with any certainty whether in the long run strict or easy divorce is best for society or whether either has much effect on moral conduct. It is enough for judicial purposes that to each state is reserved constitutional power to determine its own divorce policy. It follows that a federal court should uphold impartially the right of Nevada to adopt easy divorce laws and the right of North Carolina to enact severe ones. No difficulties arise so long as each state applies its laws to its own permanent inhabitants. The complications begin when one state opens its courts and extends the privileges of its laws to persons who never were domiciled there and attempts to visit disadvantages therefrom upon persons who have never lived there, have never submitted to the jurisdiction of its courts, and have never been lawfully summoned by personal service of process. This strikes at the orderly functioning of our federal constitutional system, and raises questions for us. The prevailing opinion rests upon a line of cases of which Christmas v. Russell, 5 Wall. 290, is typical. There it was said that If a judgment is conclusive in the state where it was pronounced, it is equally conclusive everywhere. Id. at 302. This rule was uttered long ago in very different circumstances. The judgment there in question was on a promissory note, and the Court also said that: Nothing can be plainer than the proposition is, that the judgment . . . was a valid judgment in the State where it was rendered. Jurisdiction of the case was undeniable, and the defendant being found in that jurisdiction, was duly served with process, and appeared and made full defense. Id. at 301. But the same defendant tried to relitigate his lost cause when it was sought to give that judgment effect in his home state. This Court properly held that it was not competent for the courts of any other state to reopen the merits of the cause. This very wise rule against collateral impeachment of an ordinary judgment based upon personal jurisdiction is now made to support the theory that we must enforce these very different Nevada judgments without more than formal inquiry into the jurisdiction of the court that rendered them. The effect of the Court's decision today  that we must give extraterritorial effect to any judgment that a state honors for its own purposes  is to deprive this Court of control over the operation of the full faith and credit and the due process clauses of the Federal Constitution in cases of contested jurisdiction and to vest it in the first state to pass on the facts necessary to jurisdiction. It is for this Court, I think, not for state courts, to implement these great but general clauses by defining those judgments which are to be forced upon other states. Conflict between policies, laws, and judgments of constituent states of our federal system is an old, persistent, and increasingly complex problem. The right of each state to experiment with rules of its own choice for governing matrimonial and social life is greatly impaired if its own authority is overlapped and its own policy is overridden by judgments of other states forced on it by the power of this Federal Court. If we are to extend protection to the orderly exercise of the right of each state to make its own policy, we must find some way of confining each state's authority to matters and persons that are by some standard its own. The framers of the Constitution did not lay down rules to guide us in selecting which of two conflicting state judgments or public acts would receive federal aid in its extraterritorial enforcement. Nor was it necessary. There was, and is, an adequate body of law, if we do not reject it, by which to test jurisdiction or power to render the judgments in question so far as faith and credit by federal command is concerned. By the application of well established rules these judgments fail to merit enforcement for two reasons.