92 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. that " in the absence of any positive rule affirming or denying or restraining the operation of foreign laws, courts of justice presume the tacit adoption of them by their own government, unless they are repugnant to its policy, or prejudicial to its interests." He then goes on to say, that '* whenever a State sufficiently indicates that contracts which derive their validity from its comity are re- pugnant to its policy, or are considered injurious to its interests, the presumption in favor of its adoption can no longer be made." In the Girard Will Case,^ Mr. Justice Story observes that, in seeking to discover the public policy of a State, the court is lim- ited to what ** its constitution and laws and judicial decisions make known to us." In a case ^ involving the legality of a certain devise of real estate to a foreign corporation, Mr. Justice Harlan states the law thus: " In harmony with the general rule of comity obtaining among the States composing the Union, the presumption should be indulged that a corporation of one State, not forbidden by the law of its being, may exercise within any other State the general powers conferred by its own charter, unless it is prohibited from so doing either in the direct enactments of the latter State, or by its public policy to be deduced from the general course of legislation, or from the settled adjudications of its higher courts." The authorities thus quoted are sufficient to show that, notwith- standing the absence of a direct prohibitory statute, the courts of a State may deny the power of a foreign corporation to take and hold real estate within its limits, although authorized thereto by the law of its creation, but that the right to do so depends entirely upon the public policy of the State on the subject, which the courts are to ascertain from the proper sources, and not them- selves to inaugurate. The statement that the policy of a State on any given subject is to be sought in its judicial decisions, as well as in its statutes, obviously does not imply that the judicial tribu- nals of a State may originate such policy ; coming from a Federal court, it means merely that when a judicial definition of State pol- icy, based upon a construction of constitutional or statutory pro- visions, has been made by the local court, it will be accepted and followed by the Federal court in cases to which such provisions apply. The public policy of the State to be sought and applied is not 1 2 Howard, 127. 2 Christian Union v. Yount, loi U. S. 352.
