Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/132

104 104 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. State against an attack based on the contention that the public policy of the State forbade the corporation to take or hold the lands in question. In such a controversy, the right to choose the forum might be decisive of the case. Under the provisions of the Act of Congress declaring that the laws of the several States, except when the Constitution, treaties, or statutes of the United States otherwise require, shall be regarded as rules of decision in trials at common law in the courts of the United States in cases where they apply, the construction given to a State statute by the highest judicial tribunal of such State is generally followed without question by the Federal courts in deciding matters to which the local statute is applicable. If a foreign corporation should acquire real property in a State after the court of last resort in that State had clearly declared the public policy of the State to be opposed to the acquisition of real estate by such a corporation, a Federal court would, if the case should be presented to it, accept the rule of policy announced by the State court as a part of the legislation of the State upon the subject. But suppose the decision of the State court is made after the corporation has acquired lands in the State, and the question of the title of the corporation is then Htigated in a Federal court by original suit therein, or by removal of the cause from the State court; is the Federal court bound to accept and follow the construction of the statutes in question adopted by the local court? On this point, Mr. Justice Harlan, in Christian Union v. Yount, supra, said, after alluding to the general rule : " But how far the Federal courts, in the ascertainment and enforcement of property rights depended upon the statute law, or the public policy of a State, are bound by the decisions of a State court, rendered after such rights were acquired or became vested, is a different ques- tion, and one of the gravest importance." The rule upon this subject he did not discuss, because the local decisions upon which counsel relied did not in the view of the court conclude the precise point involved in the case. In a later case,^ however, the rule is stated to be that *' where contracts and transactions have been entered into, and rights have accrued thereon, when there has been no decision of the State tri- bunals, the Federal courts properly claim the right to adopt their own interpretation of the law applicable to the case, although a 1 Burgess v. Seligman, 107 U. S. 20, 23.