312 HARVARD LAW REVIEW, this amount. There were other grounds of this alleged unconstitu- tionality, but it is not needful to mention them. The bonds were issued in 1857, in aid of a railroad company, and were payable to bearer, in New York, with a series of half- yearly coupons. The city was authorized to lay special taxes to pay the interest. For several years before they were issued, the Supreme Court of Iowa, in deciding other Htigated cases like the present one, had upheld the constitutionaHty of similar issues of bonds. There were other statutes and other decisions of a simi- lar character during several years after the bonds now in question were issued. At the time of bringing the present action, and long after the issue and negotiation of these bonds, namely, in 1862, the Supreme Court of Iowa had reversed its previous course of de- cision, and had held that the bonds were invalid, as being forbidden by the State constitution. In 1863 the present case came up to the Supreme Court of the United States, on error, and the judg- ment of the District Court overruling the plaintiff's demurrer and holding for the defendant was overruled, Mr. Justice Miller alone dissenting. The main struggle in the case, as it was argued in the Supreme Court, was over the question of following the State court in its decisions interpreting its own constitution. It was insisted, on behalf of the defendant, that the United States courts, in exercising their jurisdiction founded on the citizenship of parties, only administers the law of the State; and that in determining what the law of the State is, the United States courts are bound to follow the settled construction of the State courts, whether on a point of statute law or of common law. On the other side, it was urged that the law upon this matter now in issue was not settled in Iowa, or if it were settled, that the settled law was that of the earlier decisions; that so recent a decision as this of 1862, reversing the others, could not be held to have settled the law the other way; and the court was invited to examine the question anew and settle it for itself. But the court, speaking through Mr. Justice Swayne, while plainly indicating its approval of the older decisions, and its disapproval of the last one, and while stating its own view that the new opinion had not settled the law, nevertheless decHned to go into the question of whether the earher decisions were right, or to examine the ques- tion at all, or to follow any rule which required them, in such a case as the present, to adhere to the decision of the State courts;
