Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/640

 628 FBDBBAIi BBPORTEB. �to issue a restraining order, if a restraining order shall be nec- essary to prevent the piaintiff in suoh suit from proceeding with his suit ? It cannot be supposed that this was to remain on the statute book a mere brutum fultnen, with no power to carry it into effect and see that it was executed. Clearly, as to any suit pending in a federal court, the duty would remain where it was before, and the court in which the limited lia- bility proceeding was pending would issue the restraining order. It would be so unusual and questionable an exercise of legislative power by congress to make a direction requir- ing state courts to issue such a restraining order, that I think nothing short of the most explicit declaration of an intent to do 80 would justify the conclusion that suoh an intent ex- isted. It is most improbable, too, that the necessary power to carry into effect the grant of exclusive jurisdiction to a court of the United States, clearly intended to be exercised by some authority, should not be conf erred upon the court whose juris- diction and whose suitors are to be defended against inter- ference.. It is very likely that the person who framed section 720 overlooked' the faot that there was another law in force besides the laws relating to bankruptcy under which the courts of the United States could restrain proceedings already com- menced in a state court ; but in view of the fact that this other law was embodied in the same revision, that its meaning and force were determined by decisions of the courts, and that it must be presumed to have been re-enacted with the same meaning, I think the change made in section 720 is not sufficient to show an intention to take away anything from the meaning of section 4285, Section 720 has obviously its principal application to the restraint of suits, which, but for the injunction, the state court would have jurisdiction to go on with and determine. This is true with regard to suits against the bankrupt, stayed under the bankrupt law, and generally where a party is by the rules of equity entitled to enjoin a defendant from going on with a prior suit. The pe- culiarity of this case is that the suit stayed is one in which, by the express terms of an act of congress, the state court is absolutely without jurisdiction to prooeed. There are not. ����