Dougherty v. American McKenna Co., 255 Illinois, 369, and Walton v. Pryor, 276 Illinois, 563. It makes no distinction as to citizenship, and as here applied it does not violate the full faith and credit or privileges and immunities provisions of the Constitution. See Dougherty v. American McKenna Co., supra, relying on Chambers v. Baltimore & Ohio R. R. Co., 207 U. S. 142.

The provision of the Alabama statute that an action for death by wrongful act shall be brought in a court of competent jurisdiction within the State of Alabama and not elsewhere is jurisdictional, and no court outside of the State of Alabama has jurisdiction of the subject-matter of such an action.

It has the effect of making the action local and unenforceable in other jurisdictions. 40 Cyc. 46; 22 Ency. Pl. & Pr. 786; Eachus v. Trustees, 17 Illinois, 534; Ellenwood v. Marietta Chair Co., 158 U. S. 195; Coyne v. Southern Pacific Co., 155 Fed. Rep. 683; 12 Corpus Juris, 441; Southern Pacific Co. v. Dusablon, 48 Tex. Civ. App. 203; Pollard v. Bailey, 20 Wall. 520.

We observe that both Alabama and Illinois, through their legislatures, have declared that the Illinois courts shall not have jurisdiction of an action for a death occasioned in Alabama. The principle is plain and universal that the form of the action cannot change its substance and vest jurisdiction where it is in fact lacking. Nor did the Constitution change this rule of law. The full faith and credit clause does not purport to vest courts with jurisdiction contrary to the laws of the States, and this principle is fully recognized in Anglo-American Provision Co. v. Davis Provision Co., 191 U. S. 373.

MR. JUSTICE HOLMES delivered the opinion of the court.

This is an action of debt brought in Illinois upon a judgment recovered in Alabama. The defendant pleaded

Opinion of the Court.

252 U.S.

to the jurisdiction that the judgment was for negligently causing the death of the plaintiff's intestate in Alabama. The plaintiff demurred to the plea, setting up Article IV, §§ 1 and 2 of the Constitution of the United States. A statute of Illinois provided that no action should be brought or prosecuted in that State for damages occasioned by death occurring in another State in consequence of wrongful conduct. The Supreme Court of Illinois held that as by the terms of the statute the original action could not have been brought there, the Illinois Courts had no jurisdiction of a suit upon the judgment. The Circuit Court of Kane County having ordered that the demurrer be quashed its judgment was affirmed. 285 Illinois, 188.

In the court below and in the argument before us reliance was placed upon Anglo-American Provision Co. v. Davis Provision Co., No. 1, 191 U. S. 373, and language in Wisconsin v. Pelican Insurance Co., 127 U. S. 265, the former as showing that the clause requiring full faith and credit to be given to judgments of other States does not require a State to furnish a court, and the latter as sanctioning an inquiry into the nature of the original cause of action in order to determine the jurisdiction of a court to enforce a foreign judgment founded upon it. But we are of opinion that the conclusion sought to be built upon these premises in the present case cannot be sustained.

Anglo-American Provision Co. v. Davis Provision Co. was a suit by a foreign corporation on a foreign judgment against a foreign corporation. The decision is sufficiently explained without more by the views about foreign corporations that had prevailed unquestioned since Bank of Augusta v. Earle, 13 Pet. 519, 589-591, cited 191 U. S. 375. Moreover no doubt there is truth in the proposition that the Constitution does not require the State to furnish a court. But it also is true that there are limits to the power of exclusion and to the power to consider the nature of

the cause of action before the foreign judgment based upon it is given effect.

In Fauntleroy v. Lum, 210 U. S. 230, it was held that the courts of Mississippi were bound to enforce a judgment rendered in Missouri upon a cause of action arising in Mississippi and illegal and void there. The policy of Mississippi was more actively contravened in that case than the policy of Illinois is in this. Therefore the fact that here the original cause of action could not have been maintained in Illinois is not an answer to a suit upon the judgment. See Christmas v. Russell, 5 Wall. 290; Converse v. Hamilton, 224 U. S. 243. But this being true, it is plain that a State cannot escape its constitutional obligations by the simple device of denying jurisdiction in such cases to courts otherwise competent. The assumption that it could not do so was the basis of the decision in International Textbook Co. v. Pigg, 217 U. S. 91, 111, 112, and the same principle was foreshadowed in General Oil Co. v. Crain, 209 U. S. 211, 216, 220, 228, and in Fauntleroy v. Lum, 210 U. S. 230, 235, 236. See Keyser v. Lowell, 117 Fed. Rep. 400; Chambers v. Baltimore & Ohio R. R. Co., 207 U. S. 142, 148, and cases cited. Whether the Illinois statute should be construed as the Mississippi act was construed in Fauntleroy v. Lum was for the Supreme Court of the State to decide, but read as that court read it, it attempted to achieve a result that the Constitution of the United States forbad.

Some argument was based upon the fact that the statute of Alabama allowed an action to be maintained in a court of competent jurisdiction within the State "and not elsewhere." But when the cause of action is created the invalidity of attempts to limit the jurisdiction of other States to enforce it has been established by the decisions of this court; Tennessee Coal, Iron & R. R. Co. v. George, 233 U. S. 354; Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Ry. Co. v. Sowers, 213 U. S. 55; and had these decisions been other

wise they would not have imported that a judgment rendered exactly as required by the Alabama statute was not to have the respect due to other judgments of a sister State.

As the judgment below upheld a statute that was invalid as construed the writ of error was the proper proceeding and the writ of certiorari nust be dismissed. Judgment reversed.

STATE OF MISSOURI v. HOLLAND, UNITED STATES GAME WARDEN.

APPEAL FROM THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF MISSOURI.

No. 609. Argued March 2, 1920.—Decided April 19, 1920.

Protection of its quasi sovereign right to regulate the taking of game is a sufficient jurisdictional basis, apart from any pecuniary interest, for a bill by a State to enjoin enforcement of federal regulations over the subject alleged to be unconstitutional. P.431.

The Treaty of August 16, 1916, 39 Stat. 1702, with Great Britain, providing for the protection, by close seasons and in other ways, of migratory birds in the United States and Canada, and binding each power to take and propose to their law-making bodies the necessary measures for carrying it out, is within the treaty-making power conferred by Art. II, § 2, of the Constitution; the Act of July 3, 1918, c. 128, 40 Stat. 755, which prohibits the killing, capturing or selling any of the migratory birds included in the terms of the treaty, except as permitted by regulations compatible with those terms to be made by the Secretary of Agriculture, is valid under Art. I, § 8, of the Constitution, as a necessary and proper means of effectuating the treaty; and the treaty and statute, by bringing such birds within the paramount protection and regulation of the Government do not infringe property rights or sovereign powers, respecting such birds, reserved to the States by the Tenth Amendment. P. 432.

416.

Argument for Appellant.

With respect to rights reserved to the States, the treaty-making power is not limited to what may be done by an unaided act of Congress. P. 432.

258 Fed. Rep. 479, affirmed.

THE case is stated in the opinion.

Mr. J. G. L. Harvey and Mr. John T. Gose, Assistant Attorney General of the State of Missouri, with whom Mr. Frank W. McAllister, Attorney General of the State of Missouri, was on the brief, for appellant:

If the act of Congress now in question would have been unconstitutional when the Constitution and the first amendments were framed and ratified, it is unconstitutional now. The Constitution itself does not change. South Carolina v. United States, 199 U. S. 447, 448.

Under the ancient law, the feudal law, and the common law in England, the absolute control of wild game was a necessary incident of sovereignty. When, therefore, the United Colonies became "Free and Independent States" with full power to do all "acts and things which Independent States may of right do," the power to control the taking of wild game passed to the States. Geer v. Connecticut, 161 U. S. 519, 523-530; Ward v. Race Horse, 163 U. S. 504.

If it had even been suggested that, although Congress had no power to control the taking of wild game within the borders of any State, yet indirectly by means of a treaty with some foreign power it could acquire the power and by this means its long arm could reach into the States and take food from the tables of their people, who can for one moment believe that such a constitution would have been ratified? Wild game and the right of the people thereto have always been a "touchy" subject with all English speaking people. It was of sufficient importance to be a part of the Magna Charta and the "Charter of the Forests." See Parker v. People, 111 Illinois, 581, 647.