Parmelee v. Lawrence/Opinion of the Court

by Samuel Nelson

United States Supreme Court

78 U.S. 36

Parmelee  v.  Lawrence

In Lawler et al. v. Walker et al., it is said that the 25th section of the Judiciary Act required something more definite than the certificate of the Supreme Court to give this court jurisdiction.

The conflict of the State law with the Constitution of the United States, and a decision by a State court in favor of its validity, must appear on the face of the record before it can be re-examined in this court. It must appear in the pleadings of the suit, or from the evidence in the course of the trial, in the instructions asked for, or from exceptions taken to the rulings of the court. It must be that such a question was necessarily involved in the decision, and that the State court would not have given a judgment without deciding it. The decision in this case was approved, and applied in Railroad Company v. Rock. The certificate was as full in that case as in the present, but it was the only evidence of the fact that a Federal question had been presented.

The judge, in delivering the opinion of the court in that case, observed that 'it is probable that counsel in the argument of the case in the Supreme Court of Iowa, insisted that these matters were involved, and that the chief justice felt bound to certify, when requested, that they were drawn in question. But if the record,' he proceeds, 'does not show that they were necessarily drawn in question, this court cannot take jurisdiction to reverse the decision of the highest court of a State upon the ground that counsel brought them in question in argument.' We will add, if this court should entertain jurisdiction upon a certificate alone in the absence of any evidence of the question in the record, then the Supreme Court of the State can give the jurisdiction in every case where the question is made by counsel in the argument. The office of the certificate, as it respects the Federal question, is to make more certain and specific what is too general and indefinite in the record, but is incompetent to originate the question within the true construction of the 25th section.

MOTION TO DISMISS GRANTED.

Notes