Page:United States Reports, Volume 209.djvu/203

 209 U. 8. H.aL, J., dissenting. made under their authority, as the supreme law of the land, 'anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the con- trary notwithstanding.' If they fail therein, and withhold or deny right, privileges, or immunities secured by the Con stitution and laws of the United States, the party aggrieved may bring the case from the highest court of the State in which the question could be decided to this court for final and conclusive determination." Robb v. Connolly, 111 U.S. 624, 637. So that an order of the Federal court preventing the State from having the services of its Attorney General in one of its own courts, except at the risk of his being fined and arrest.d, cannot be justified upon the ground that the ques- tion of constitutional law, involved in the enforcement of the statutes in question, was beyond the competency of a state, court to consider and determine, prn.rily, as between the parties before it in a suit brought by the State itself. At the argument of this case counsel for the railway com- pany insisted that the provisions of the act in question were so drastic that they could be enforced by the State in its own courts with such persistency and in such a manner as, in a very brief period, to' have the railway officers and agents all in jail, the business of the company destroyed and its property ccn- fiscated by heavy and successive penalties, before a final judi- cial decision as to the constitutionality of the act could be obtained. I infer from some language in the court's opinion that these apprehensions are shared by some of my brethren. And this supposed danger to the railway company ami its shareholders seems to have been the basis of the action of the Federal Circuit Court when, by its or,let directed against the Attorney General of Minnesota, it practically excluded th State from its own courts in respect of the iLes here involved But really no such qnestion as to the state statute is here in volved or need be now considered; for it cannot possibly arise on the hearing of the present application of that officer for dis~ charge on habeas cors. The only question now before this court is whether the suit by Perkins and Shepard in the Federal

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