Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 9.djvu/252

 HOLMES V. OBEGON & CALITOBNIA B. CO. 237 �on proper allegations and evidence in the courts called upon to act in the matter, are still open to inquiry collaterally in the same or other courts, would render the adjudications of nearly all private cases in the national courts inconclusive and open to collateral attaok. The national courts, while technically courts of record and superior courts, are yet courts of limited jurisdiction. This has been often so determined by the supreme court, and it is only necessary to read the constitution and statutes conferring jurisdiction to perceive it. In private cases the jurisdiction usually depends either upon the cit- izenship of the parties, or whether the case arises under the constitu- tion and laws of the United States. In the former case the jurisdic- tional fact of citizenship must be alleged, and, if denied, proved. IH the latter case there is often a difference of opinion, as to .whether the case arises under. the constitution or laws of the United States. Are the questions of citizenship, and whether the case is one arising under the constitution and laws of the United States, — 'the jurisdic- tional facts, — when once adjudicated upon proper allegations and proofs, to be ever after open to examination and repeated re-exami- nations, at the pleasure of the parties, whenever they are brough>t col- laterally before the same or other courts? They certainly, are, df the libellant's proposition can be maintained, for they are jurisdictional facts in the same sense and precisely of the same kind of jurisdic- tional facts as the inhabitancy of Perkins. Citizenship, as a juris- dictional fact, is precisely similar to inhabitancy. They are estab- lished when controverted by similar evidence, and one is as easily proved as the other. To give the national courts jurisdiction, on the ground of citizenship, the opposing parties must be eithet citizens of different states, or one must be a citizen and the other an alien. Unless this condition exists the court has no jurisdiction, and the court in which the case is brought must necessarily determine for itself whether the jurisdictional fact exists or net. When this juris- dictional fact is alleged in the pleadings, established to the satisfac- tion of the court, and determined by it, its adjudication upon the fact is conclusive; and it has been so distinctly decided and settled by the supreme court of the United States in Erwin v. Lowry, 7 How. 180. I am not aware that the proposition has ever since been ques- tiOned. The supreme court has gone so far as to hold that in judg- ments of the circuit courts, being courts of record, this question cau- not be collaterally raised upon a record which does not even aver the jurisdictional facts. McCormick v, Sullivant, 10 Wheat. 199 ; Ken- nedy V. Bank of Georgia, 8 How. 611, 612^ See, also, Skillern's JEJx'r, ��� �