Opinion ID: 2549213
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: The Misplaced Reliance On Chapman v. Parr Places District Courts In A Pre-Statehood Jurisdictional Straitjacket

Text: ¶ 16 The dissent's reliance on Chapman v. Parr [32] for the notion that courts exercising divorce cognizance are without jurisdiction when entertaining issues not authorized by statutory divorce law is an unwarranted extension of both Chapman and Irwin v. Irwin , [33] the case on which Chapman is bottomed. Chapman dealt with the inapplicability of general venue statutes to divorce litigation. It refused to extend to divorce suits the common law's intrastate forum non conveniens doctrine. To that extent Chapman is still effective law. Insofar as Chapman appears to treat trial judges (sitting in divorce cases) as eunuchs fitted into a statutory straitjacket, its holding should be relegated to antiquarian lore as an aberrational exposition of post-statehood law. Chapman relies on Irwin, [34] a pronouncement by the Supreme Court of the Territory of Oklahoma. Insofar as Chapman would deny the district court its power to entertain for approval agreement-generated issues, it is pure ipse dixit a statement utterly unsupported by the text of Irwin or by any post-statehood jurisprudence of this court. The territorial court's pronouncement stands not only sans precedential effect, it is also imprisoned in territorial divorce law that is contrary to this court's extant (post-statehood) jurisprudence [35] (as well as to the present-day statutory divorce-law regime).