Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/188

 180 wholly unfavourable to a just understanding of the case.

§ 1304. If it should be said, that the judgment might be unjust upon the merits, or erroneous in point in law, the proper answer is, that if true, that would furnish no ground for interference; for the evils of a new trial would be greater, than it would cure. Every such judgment ought to be presumed to be correct, and founded in justice. And what security is there, that the new judgment, upon the re-examination, would be more just, or more conformable to law, than the first? What state has a right to proclaim, that the judgments of its own courts are better founded in law or in justice, than those of any other state? The evils of introducing a general system of re-examination of the judicial proceedings of other states, whose connections are so intimate, and whose rights are so interwoven with our own, would far outweigh any supposable benefits from an imagined superior justice in a few cases. Motives of this sort, founded upon an enlarged confidence, and reciprocal duties, might well be presumed to have entered into the minds of the framers of the confederation, and the constitution. They intended to give, not only faith and credit to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of each of the states, such as belonged to those of all foreign nations and tribunals; but to give to them full faith and credit; that is, to attribute to them positive and absolute verity, so that they cannot be contradicted, or the truth of them be denied, any more than in the state, where they originated.