Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/119

91 HARVARD LAW REVIEW VOL. IX. MAY 25, 1895. No. 2. THE DOCTRINE OF PUBLIC POLICY AS AP- PLIED TO OWNERSHIP OF REAL ESTATE BY FOREIGN CORPORATIONS. A ST ATE may, by legislative enactment, directly and expressly prohibit a foreign corporation from taking or holding land within its borders. But, in the absence of such an enactment, is it for the courts to lay down a prohibitory rule, — and, if so, under what circumstances ? Little is to be found upon this subject in the text-books, and the number of cases in which it has been considered is quite lim- ited. Yet the question is of great practical importance, when boundary lines must be looked to, in passing on the right of a corporation to purchase or become the devisee of lands. It is elementary that a corporation of one State may not exer- cise its powers in another State, without the express or implied consent of the latter, and that the right to hold and the mode of acquiring title to land depends upon the local law of the territorial sovereignty ; but under what conditions may the courts, speaking for the State, withhold the requisite consent, and what are the guiding rules under which the local law is to be determined in the case stated ? In Bank of Augusta v. Earle,^ Chief-Justice Taney quotes with approval the proposition laid down in Story's ** Conflict of Laws," 1 13 Peters, 519. 13