Gaines v. Fuentes/Dissent Bradley

by Joseph P. Bradley

United States Supreme Court

92 U.S. 10

Gaines  v.  Fuentes

MR. JUSTICE BRADLEY, with whom concurred MR. JUSTICE SWAYNE, dissenting.

The question, whether the proceeding in this case, which was instituted in the State Court of Probate, was removable thence into the Circuit Court of the United States, depends upon the true construction of the acts of Congress which give the right of removal. The first act on this subject was the twelfth section of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which declares 'that if a suit be commenced in any State court against an alien, or by a citizen of the State in which the suit is brought against a citizen of another State' [and certain conditions and security specified in the act be performed and tendered], 'it shall be the duty of the State court to . . . proceed no further in the cause, . . . which shall then proceed in the United States Court in the same manner as if it had been brought there by original process.' This twelfth section cannot be entirely understood without reference to the preceding section, by which the original jurisdiction of the Circuit Court was conferred. That section declares that the circuit courts shall have original cognizance, concurrent with the courts of the several States, of all suits of a civil nature, at common law or in equity, where the matter in dispute exceeds, exclusive of costs, the sum or value of $500, and the United States are plaintiffs or petitioners, or an alien is a party, or the suit is between a citizen of the State where the suit is brought and a citizen of another State; . . . but that 'no civil suit shall be brought before either of said courts against an inhabitant of the United States by any original process in any other district than that whereof he is an inhabitant, or in which he shall be found at the time of serving the writ.'

Now, the question arises, What proceedings are meant by the phrase 'suits of a civil nature at common law or in equity,' in the latter section, conferring original jurisdiction, and the phrase 'a suit,' in the former section, giving the right of removal? A 'suit of a civil nature at common law or in equity' may, by virtue of the eleventh section, be brought in a circuit court if the parties are citizens of different States, and one of them is a citizen of the State where the suit is brought. 'A suit' commenced in any State court by a citizen of that State against a citizen of another State may be removed into the Circuit Court; and, when removed, it is directed that 'the cause shall then proceed in the same manner as if it had been brought there by original process.' By this act, therefore, any 'suit' which could have been originally brought in the Circuit Court may be removed there from the State court, if brought by a citizen of the State against a citizen of another State; and it was always supposed, that, if it could not be originally brought there, it could not be removed there, because it is to be proceeded in 'as if it had been brought there by original process.' Mr. Justice Story, in a case before him decided in 1836, in reference to this section used the following language: 'It is apparent, from the language of the closing passage of the section above quoted, that it contemplates such cases, and such cases only, to be liable to removal, as might under the law, or at all events under the Constitution, have been brought before the Circuit Court by original process.' Judge Conkling, in his 'Treatise on the United States Courts' (a work long used with approbation by the profession), says, 'It is obvious, from the language of the twelfth section of the Judicial Act, that it was not intended by it to extend the jurisdiction of these courts over causes brought before them on removal beyond the limits prescribed to their original jurisdiction; and such, as far as it goes, is the judicial construction which has been given to this section.' Congress, undoubtedly, might authorize, and in special cases has authorized, the removal of causes from State courts to the United States Court which could not have been originally brought in the latter. An instance of the kind is found in this very twelfth section, in a special case where a suit respecting the title to land has been commenced in a State court between two citizens of the same State, and one of the parties, before the trial, states to the court by affidavit that he claims title under a grant from another State. In Bushnell v. Kennedy, 9 Wall. 387, however, this court held, that a citizen of one State sued in another State by a citizen thereof on a claim which had belonged to a citizen of the latter State, and had been assigned to the plaintiff, might have the cause removed to the Circuit Court of the United States, although, perhaps, it might not have been originally cognizable therein; but it still remains to determine what kinds of controversies are intended by the act.

Now, the phrase, 'suits at common law and in equity,' in this section, and the corresponding term 'suit,' in the twelfth, are undoubtedly of very broad signification, and cannot be construed to embrace only ordinary actions at law and ordinary suits in equity, but must be construed to embrace all litigations between party and party which in the English system of jurisprudence, under the light of which the Judiciary Act, as well as the Constitution, was framed, were embraced in all the various forms of procedure carried on in the ordinary law and equity courts, as distinguished from the ecclesiastical, admiralty, and military courts of the realm. The matters litigated in these extraordinary courts are not, by a fair construction of the Judiciary Act, embraced in the terms 'suit at law or in equity,' or 'suit,' unless they have become incorporated with the general mass of municipal law, and subjected to the cognizance of the ordinary courts.

Now, it is perfectly plain that an application for the probate of a will is not such a subject as is fairly embraced in these terms. This court has in repeated instances expressly said that the probate of wills and the administration of estates do not belong to the jurisdiction of the Federal courts under the grant of jurisdiction contained in the Judiciary Act; and it may, without qualification, be stated, that no respectable authority, in the profession or on the bench, has ever contended for any such jurisdiction. Whether, after a will is proposed for probate, and a caveat has been put in against it, and a contestatio litis has thus been raised, and a controversy instituted inter partes, Congress might not authorize the removal of the cause for trial to a Federal court, where the parties pro and con are citizens of different States, is not now the question. The question before us is, whether Congress has ever done so; and it seems to me that it has not. The controversy is not of that sort or nature which belongs to the category of a suit at law or in equity, as those terms were used in the Judiciary Act.

It is not intended to say that the validity of a will may not often come in question, and require adjudication in both a court of law and a court of equity. It does come in question frequently. Devisavit vel non is an issue frequently made at law, and directed in equity; and there are special cases, also, where the validity of a will may be investigated in equity, as shown in the case of Broderick's Will, lately decided by this court. But that is a very different thing from hearing and determining a question of probate, even when the question becomes a litigated one. This question belongs to special courts, having a special mode of procedure, and is subject to rules that took their origin in the ecclesiastical laws; and it certainly cannot be seriously contended, that, if the Federal courts have no jurisdiction of the probate of wills, they nevertheless have jurisdiction of proceedings to revoke the probate. This would be to assume the whole jurisdiction of the subject.

The proceeding in the case below was one to revoke the probate of a will; simply that, and nothing more. It was not merely to set aside the will so far as it affected the defendants in error. Not at all. It brought up the question of probate under a form of proceeding peculiar to the course of justice in Louisiana, called an action of nullity. This action may undoubtedly be entertained in the Federal courts in that State; at all events, to set aside their own judgments. But can it be entertained when the object is to revoke the probate of a will by a decree to annul the judgment of probate? That is the precise question to be determined here.

It is contended, however, that the act of March 2, 1867, which gives the right of removal to the Federal court of a suit in which there is controversy between a citizen of the State in which the suit is brought and a citizen of another State, where the latter makes affidavit that he was reason to and does believe, that, from prejudice or local influence, he will not be able to obtain justice in the State court, extends the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court to cases of every kind of controversy which may be litigated between parties. But I cannot perceive any such intention in the act. There is no indication that the jurisdiction of the Federal court was meant to be extended to any class of cases to which it did not extend before. It authorizes the removal at any time before trial, and gives the right to the plaintiff as well as the defendant. These are the only changes that seem to have been in the mind of Congress.

If it is desirable that the right of removal should be extended to cases like the present, it is easy for Congress to legislate to that effect. Until it does so, the right in my judgment does not exist. Perhaps it is desirable that the law should be as the plaintiff in error contends it is; but it is not for the court to make the law, but to declare what law has been made. I cannot free myself from the conviction, that the decision of the court in this case is based rather upon what it is deemed the law should be than upon a sound construction of the statutes which have been actually enacted.

In my opinion, the judgment of the Supreme Court of Louisiana ought to be affirmed.

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WAITE also dissented from the judgment of the court.

Notes