Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 4.djvu/333

317 THE CASE OF GELPCKE v. DUBUQUE, 317 to the Union, will never be likely to feel any bias inauspicious to the prin- ciples on which it is founded. To come back, now, to the question how far the United States courts may go in refusing to follow the decisions of the State courts. Shall they be limited merely to the prevention of results which would be absurd and irrational, or may they properly go farther? As I have already said, in this class of cases, as in all others, whenever a question develops which involves the law of the United States, the United States court must, as touching that, act independently, although its ground of jurisdiction over the case was originally merely the citizenship of the parties. But suppose no question of that kind to arise. That is the fact in the present case; this case, if originally brought in a State court, could not have been carried up to the Supreme Court of the United States, because it does not involve any question of a "law" impairing the obligation of contracts.^ The lower United States courts, as we have seen, deal with such cases, because they have concurrent juris- diction with the State courts on the ground of the citizenship of the parties; and, having regard to the reason that they are given this concurrent jurisdiction, namely, the danger of injury to citizens of other States or countries, by reason of the bias of the State courts, it may be laid down that wherever State courts are likely to be under a local bias, adverse to the citizens of other States or countries, the United States courts must hold themselves at liberty to depart from the decisions of the local courts in constru- ing and applying the local law and the local constitution, to look into the question for themselves, and to adopt their own rules of administration. This appears to be only a just assertion of the power intended to be given to these courts by the Constitution of the United States, in dealing with the class of cases now under consideration. To this effect is the reasoning of Mr. Justice Bradley, speaking for the court, in Burgess v. Seligman, 107 U. S. 20 (1882). Assuming this to be so, we have thus far only determined that the United States courts will look into such questions for them- selves. The statement of Chief Justice Taney in the case of Rowan v. Runnels, above quoted, did not go beyond this. But in the case of Gelpcke v. Dubuque, the Supreme Court flatly refused ^ Railroad Company v. McClure, 10 Wall. 511.