powers of the States of the American Union are to be observed. Because there exists above them the sovereign National Government and its supreme judicial tribunal, the Supreme Court of the United States, all questions of jurisdiction are judicially determined, and resort cannot be had to the political modes of protesting or redressing wrongs claimed to be suffered by one State because of a wrongful or oppressive exercise of jurisdiction by another State of the Union. In the second place, because of the non-sovereign status of these States, and the fact that they have no dealings, as independent political persons, with foreign States, they are wholly incapacitated from exercising jurisdiction over their own citizens who have obtained a foreign domicil. Thus, as is elsewhere pointed out, while it is a generally accepted principle of public law that a sovereign State may assert whatever jurisdiction it pleases over its own citizens wherever they may be, holding them responsible in its courts for breaches of its own laws both civilly and criminally, for acts committed by them while in foreign countries, the same is not true of the member States of the American Union. They can take no cognizance of acts committed outside their own territorial limits upon the ground that the accused or tort feasors are its own citizens. And, of course, these States have no jurisdiction upon the high seas such as sovereign States possess. Furthermore, as a matter of express provision of the Federal Constitution, each of them is compelled to give full faith and credit to the public acts, records and judicial proceedings of the other States of the Union,-an obligation which, as between sovereign States, is voluntary in character and discretionary in extent.

In the case of United States v. Bennett,1 decided in 1914, the Supreme Court, dwelling upon the principles

1 1 232 U. S. 299.

to be applied in determining the jurisdictional powers of the individual States as distinct from those applicable in the case of the Union, pointed out that while the attempt of one of these States to tax property outside its territorial limits would be in violation of the provision of the Federal Constitution which prohibits it from taking property without due process of law, the same was not true of the United States itself. The court said: "The application to the States of the rule of due process relied upon [by counsel in the case] comes from the fact that their spheres of activity are enforced and protected by the Constitution and therefore it is impossible for one State [of the Union] to reach out and tax property in another without violating the Constitution, for where the power of the one ends the authority of the other begins. But this has no application to the Government of the United States so far as its admitted taxing power is concerned. It is coextensive with the limits of the United States; it knows no restriction except where one is expressed in or arises from the Constitution, and therefore embraces all the attributes which pertain to sovereignty in the fullest sense. . . . Because the limitations of the Constitution are barriers bordering the States and preventing them from transcending the limits of their authority, and thus destroying the rights of other States [of the Union], and at the same time saving their rights from destruction by the other States, in other words, of maintaining and preserving the rights of all the States, affords no ground for constructing an imaginary constitutional boundary around the exterior confines of the United States for the purpose of shutting that Government off from the exertion of powers which inherently belong to it by virtue of its sovereignty."

Territorial Jurisdiction of the British "Dominions." As regards the strictly territorial extent of their several

jurisdictions, the British Dominions have a status similar to that of the individual States of the American Union. A discussion of the doctrines developed with reference to this matter of Dominion jurisdiction is the subject of a separate chapter in Keith's standard treatise on Responsible Government in the Dominions.1a

That the legislative or other jurisdictional powers vested by the British Parliament in the several colonies or Dominions of the British Empire, unless expressly otherwise provided by Act of Parliament, may be exercised by them only within their respective limits, or, at the most, with reference to violations of their respective municipal laws committed outside those limits by persons domiciled within them, has been repeatedly declared by the courts and by the Imperial Government. Thus, for example, special Acts of the British Parliament have been needed in order to provide for the extradition of fugitives from the justice of one colony or Dominion found in another possession of the British Crown. Some of the questions regarding the situs of personal property for purposes of taxation by the Dominions have resembled very much those which have arisen in the States of the American Union.

Taxation. The decision of the Supreme Court in the case known by the descriptive title "State Tax on ForeignHeld Bonds," 2 decided in 1873, has been one of the most discussed of the decisions of that court, and the doctrine therein declared, if not repudiated by later decisions, has at least been held down to practically the precise point then decided, namely, that bonds are property in the hands of their holders, and that, when these

la Vol. I, part III, chap. II, "The Territorial Limitation on Dominion Legislation." See also Keith's Imperial Unity and the Dominions (pp. 132 et seq.), which is in a manner, a supplement to his earlier threevolume work.

'Cleveland, etc., R. R. Co. v. Pennsylvania, 15 Wall. 300.

holders are non-residents of the State in which the company issuing them is incorporated or doing business, they are beyond the jurisdiction of that State.

With regard to the general powers of taxation which a State possesses, Justice Field, rendering the opinion for a unanimous court, said:

"The power of taxation, however vast in its character and searching in its extent, is necessarily limited to subjects within the jurisdiction of the State. These subjects are persons, property and business which last is, of course, also a kind of property. Whatever form taxation may assume, whether as duties, imposts, excises or licenses, it must relate to one of these subjects. It is not possible to conceive of any other, though, as applied to them, the taxation may be exercised in a great variety of ways. It may touch property in every shape, in its natural condition, in its manufactured form, and in its various transmutations. And the amount of the taxation may be determined by the value of the property, or its use, or its capacity, or its productiveness. Unless restrained by provisions of the Federal Constitution, the power of the State as to the mode, form and extent of taxation is unlimited, where the subjects to which it applies are within her jurisdiction."

To this description of the State's taxing power may be added the statement, which has been earlier discussed, that sovereign States retain jurisdiction over their own citizens or subjects wherever they may be, whether for taxation or other purposes.3

As to the situs of the property involved in this case, the court said: "Corporations may be taxed, like natural persons, upon their property and business. But debts owing by corporations, like debts owing by individuals, are not property of the debtors in any sense; they are obligations of the debtors, and only possess value in the hands of the creditors. With them they are property, and in their hands they may be taxed. To call debts property of the debtors is simply to misuse terms. All the property there can be, in the nature of things, in debts of corporations, belongs to the creditors, to whom they are payable,

In this Foreign-Held Bonds case the State law was held invalid because, as applied to the bonds, it was in violation of the provision of the Federal Constitution that no State of the Union shall pass a law impairing the obligation of contracts.* The obligation impaired was that between the corporations which were ordered to pay the tax and their non-resident bond-holders.

In Hayes v. Pacific Steamship Co.," it was held that a State might not tax as property a ship of a foreign registry which was only temporarily in a port of the State, which was, as it were, in transitu. Substantially the same was held in Morgan v. Parham. So, also, in St. Louis v. Wiggins Ferry Co.,' it was held that the State of Missouri could not tax ferry-boats belonging to an Illinois company which boats were laid up on the Illinois shore when not in use. The Court said: "Where there is jurisdiction neither as to person nor property, the imposition of a tax would be ultra vires and void. If the legislature of a State should enact that the citizens or property of another State or country should be taxed in the same manner as the persons and property within its own limits and subject to its authority, or in any manner whatsoever, such a law would be as much a nullity as if in conflict with the most explicit constitutional inhibition. Jurisdiction is as necessary to valid legislative as to valid judicial action."

and follows their domicil, wherever that may be. Their debts can have no locality separate from the parties to whom they are due."

In other cases the Supreme Court of the United States has held that the right of a foreign corporation or non-resident to do business within a State may be subjected to what is in the nature of a license or excise tax. It has also been held that where foreign-held evidences of ownership or of credits are placed in the hands of resident agents for the purpose of collecting the interests, rents, etc., and of reinvesting the proceeds, they are to be deemed to have their situs within the State and therefore taxable by the State.

Article I, section 10.

517 Howard 596.

16 Wallace 471.

'11 Wallace 423.