Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 9.djvu/258

 HOLMES V. OKBGOIS & CALIPOENIA R. CO. 243 �which I have referred the question of jurisdietion is open to exami- nation and repeated re-examination, collaterally, as often as the record is presented, there could be no conclusive determination of any jurisdietional fact, and, certainly, none in any of the United States courts, depending upon citizenship of the parties, or upon the ques- tions whether the case arises under the constitution and laws of the United States ; and no conclusive determination of the jurisdietional facts alleged in an indictment for an offence, when the offence must be committed within the territorial jurisdietion of the court in which the indictment is found and tried. To give the decision the broad scope contended for, would be to overrule many cases deciding the principle upon which the conclusiveness of the adjudication rests in the same court, to which the court has not adverted in its decision. It can- not be supposed that it was the intention to overrule long-established prinoiples without even mentioning the cases in which they were elaborately discnssed and established. Besides, the doctrines of those cases, and the cases themselves by name, have been expressly re- affirmed since the decision in Thompson v. Whitman, and the case of Grignon'a Lessees was cited and approved, and the prinoiples estab- lished by it reaffirmed, as late as 101 U. S. 425-26. The case of Thompson v. Whitman did not call for a statement of principle so broad in its terms as some of the language used, and the language of a judi- cial opinion must be considered with reference to the case decided. There must be a line somewhere between disputable and conclusive adjudications of jurisdietional facts. Some, certainly, have been adjudged disputable, and others indisputable. The court says, in the case relied on : "It must he admitted that no decision has ever been made on the precise point" involved in that case. 18 Wall. 468. Then the court does not consider the "precise point" involved and decided in that case to be the same with any point decided in Grignon's Lessees, and therefore it cannot be the same as the point stated in this language : �" It is coram judice wbenever a case is presented which brings this power into action. If the petitioner presents such a case in his petition that on a demurrer the court would render a judgment in his favor, it is an undoubted case o£ jurisdietion; whether on an answer denying and putting in issue the allegations of the petition, the petitioner makes out a case, is the exercise of jurisdietion conferred by the flling a petition containiiig all the requisites, and in the maaner required by law." �That this and the further proposition, that the adjudication upon such a petition is conclusive, are points of the decision, was the ��� �