Page:Borden v. State ex rel. Robinson.pdf/22

540 in favor of the jurisdiction of the court over the subject matter, because the contrary appeared. In the other ease from 1 Salk. the principle is that upon a presumption of jurisdiction the superior court would pronounce a judgment that would render it forever afterwards impossible to show any thing against the jurisdiction of the inferior court. In all the cases however there was in fact and in truth an absolute want of jurisdiction of the subject matter. They were all cases that had never been committed to these courts respectively by law for their deliberation and adjudication and were therefore really without their powers. And if it be true that every judicial sentence is ipso facto a nullity, unless both the subject matter and the person be within its jurisdiction, these must all have been nullities. These are therefore cases that go to prove that this proposition, that the decision of a court on a case beyond its jurisdiction is a nullity, although true in the abstract, is to some extent practically false and is subservient at least to the paramount rule that the judgment of a superior court is not void: and it must be also subject to another paramount rule that a judgment of a court of record, whose jurisdiction is superior and final, is conclusive to all the world and puts an end to all enquiry concerning matters decided by it. Because this was the ground upon which the supreme court of the United States refused the writ of Habeas Corpus to Tobias Watkins, although urged to do so upon the ground that the record of the circuit court for the District of Columbia showed upon its face that the offence, of which he was convicted, was not within the jurisdiction of that court but without it. Ex parte Tobias Watkins, 3 Peters 193.

Upon the same ground rest the several decisions of the supreme court of the United States, that announce and reiterate the doctrine that although that court will not presume in favor of the jurisdiction of the other federal courts, because they are all courts of limited jurisdiction, and jurisdiction must therefore be alleged in their records, otherwise their proceedings are erroneous; nevertheless that without such allegation their judgments are not absolute nullities which may be totally disregarded.