Crapo v. Kelly/Dissent Bradley

Mr. Justice BRADLEY, with whom concurred Mr. Justice FIELD, dissenting.

I dissent from the judgment of the court in this case. According to my view, whilst the disposition of his movable property by the owner is respected by the laws of all States everywhere, the laws of any particular State and transfers by operation of law, have no extra-territorial force which other States will concede, except by comity. This comity is never exercised to the prejudice of the citizens of the State which accords it. In the case now decided the force and effect of the judicial assignment would have been regarded as conclusive in Massachusetts had the ship, the subject of it, returned there and become subjected to its local jurisdiction. But whether conclusive in other countries, to which the ship might have gone, would have depended entirely on the exercise of comity by the governments and courts of those countries; and the reason would be that the property was on the high seas, and not within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, when the effect of its local laws were called into exercise by the judicial assignment. I do not deny that if the property had been within Massachusetts jurisdiction when the assignment passed, the property would have been ipso facto transferred to the assignee by the laws of Massachusetts proprio vigore, and being actually transferred and vested, would have been respected the world over. But that was not this case.

I think the case comes clearly within the operation of the three fundamental rules or axioms laid down by Huber in his Praelectiones, which constitute the groundwork of Justice Story's Treatise on the Conflict of Laws. 'The first is, that the laws of every empire have force only within the limits of its own government, and bind all who are subjects thereof, but not beyond those limits. The second is, that all persons who are found within the limits of a government, whether their residence is permanent or temporary, are to be deemed subjects thereof. The third is, that the rulers of every empire, from comity, admit that the laws of every people, in force within its own limits, ought to have the same force everywhere, so far as they do not prejudice the powers or rights of other governments or of their citizens.'

And whilst in many particulars the vessels, especially the public vessels, of a country will be regarded as carrying with them the jurisdiction of that country, I cannot concede that this fiction (for it is only a fictio uris) can be extended to such a case as this. When it does apply it applies wherever the ship may be, whether on the high seas or within the limits of a foreign country. It would apply to a ship in New York harbor as well as to a ship on the high seas. But whether that rule can be applied at all, as between the different States of the Union, to vessels belonging to citizens of the United States, which are properly vessels of the United States, and not of particular States, need not be decided in this case.