ARTICLE IV

Section 1. Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.117

117 This is a command to the States which they must obey. It is another of the nationalizing clauses of the Constitution. "The public acts [that is, the laws], records and judicial proceedings" (judgments and decrees of courts) of one State must be given in every other State "the force and effect to which" they are "entitled in the State where rendered." Thus a copy (properly authenticated or proved) of a judgment against a man for money, obtained in a court of the State of New York, may be presented to a court in California (the defendant having moved to the latter State, perhaps to escape the obligation) and a judgment will be there entered against him and enforced as it would have been in New York had he remained there. It is not necessary again to bear the trouble and expense of bringing witnesses and proving a case.

Substantially the same language was in a resolution passed in 1777 by the Continental Congress, and it reappeared in the Articles of Confederation.

The first Congress under the Constitution passed an act (May 26, 1790) to effectuate this clause by prescribing how records should be authenticated and declaring that they should have such faith and credit in every State as they had in the State from which they were taken.

Full faith and credit was held by the Supreme Court of the United States (1903) not to have been denied by the

courts of Massachusetts in permitting the first wife of a man, rather than the second, to administer his estate upon his death, as the law of Massachusetts made invalid in that State a divorce which he went to South Dakota to procure. Full faith and credit did not require that a decree of divorce granted in South Dakota should be respected and made operative against the public policy of Massachusetts.

And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.118

118 Thus an Act of Congress provides that an act of a legislative body is authenticated for use in another State "by having the seal of such Territory, State, or country affixed thereto." A copy of a judgment or decree of court rendered in any State "shall be proved or admitted in any other court within the United States by the attestation of the clerk and the seal of the court annexed, if there be a seal, together with a certificate of the judge that the said attestation is in due form."

Section 2. The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.119

119 Provisions of this kind were in the colonial charters. The colonists of Virginia, for example, who received (1606) the first charter from the English sovereign, were by that writing guaranteed "all liberties, franchises and immunities within any of our dominions to all intents and purposes as if they had been abiding and born within this our realm of England."

"The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among the people of the different States in this Union," ran the Articles of Confederation, "the free

inhabitants of each of these States (paupers, vagabonds and fugitives from justice excepted) shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States."

A citizen of one State going to or transacting business in another is entitled in the latter State to the privileges and immunities enjoyed by its citizens. The State cannot legislate against him or otherwise disfavor him. The intent was that the citizen of one State should not be an alien in another. In any State he has the protection of the government of that State, the enjoyment of life and liberty with the right to acquire and possess property, the right to pursue and obtain happiness, to institute actions in court, and generally to possess what the citizen of the State posNumerous cases have arisen under this clause where ! States have attempted to favor their own citizens to the prejudice of the citizens of other States. Such laws are void for conflict with this clause.

sesses.

After the Negro was emancipated there was adopted the Fourteenth Amendment (1868), one of the provisions of which (Note 172) is that "no State shall . . . abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." Thus, putting the two clauses together, the State is forbidden to abridge the privileges and immunities of (1) the citizen of another State, and of (2) the citizen of the United States. For there are two citizenships and two loyalties.

A State cannot take away the right of citizens of other States to sue in the Federal courts of that State. This clause was held not to warrant an act of Congress prescribing punishment of persons for conspiring to deprive others (liberated Negroes) of equal privileges or immunities, as the guaranty of the Constitution is against wrongs done by States and not by persons. Wrongs done in a State by persons must be dealt with by the State in the exercise of its police power, and not by the Nation.

A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.120

120 This returning of a fugitive charged with crime to the place of his misdeed for trial is called interstate extradition. International extradition was probably aided in development by the practical operation of this clause. It was more than half a century after it was written in 1787 that England entered into a treaty of extradition (1842) with the United States. This was followed from time to time by treaties among leading countries. Previously to those treaties a fugitive too often found safety in a foreign country, although sometimes a government would surrender a fugitive as a matter of courtesy. Thus Spain delivered to the United States for trial a fugitive who had been indicted (1871) for taking the funds of the City of New York.

The "shall be delivered up" in this clause is not ' mandatory. Congress has provided no remedy should a State refuse to deliver, and there have been many instances of refusal where, in the opinion of the Governor, substantial justice did not require surrender. The Governor of Ohio refused (1860) to deliver to Kentucky a man charged with aiding the escape of a slave, and the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Act of Congress of 1793, passed under this clause, declaring it to be the duty of a State to deliver upon a sufficient showing, was not mandatory. Therefore, a Federal court would not issue a mandate to compel the governor to obey.

The State will not deliver the fugitive until it has examined the record against the accused and found it regular and legal. If it appears that the proceeding was brought

to force a settlement of a private demand, or to bring back the accused to be tried on some other charge, or otherwise to misuse legal writ or process, the application will be denied. And even after the State has determined to surrender the fugitive, he may secure, by the writ of habeas corpus, a hearing in court as to whether, on the record exhibited against him, he is legally restrained of his liberty.

One who while a fugitive commits an offence against the laws of the asylum State must stand trial there before being surrendered, and if convicted must serve sentence. To be a fugitive within the meaning of this clause it is enough to have left the demanding State after having committed a crime. One who goes into another State and commits a crime and then returns home is a fugitive. To be "charged" with crime within the language of the clause so as to warrant extradition one must be accused by a person having knowledge of the offence and stating it under oath; or if he has been convicted in the demanding State, then a record of the trial must be submitted to the Governor of the asylum State.

It is the duty of the Federal courts to see that this power be not extended to fields and exercised in classes of cases not clearly within the Constitution.

The "felony or other crime" of this clause includes any indictable offence under the present laws of the demanding State that is, it is not limited to the offences known to the common law at the time the Constitution was adopted.

The governor of the asylum State should not attempt to pass upon the guilt of the accused - it is enough to determine that an extraditable offence has been regularly charged.

The international rule of treaty, that a fugitive surrendered by a foreign country cannot, on being taken home, be tried for an offence not embraced in the demand, does not generally apply to interstate extraditions under this clause, although some of the States follow that rule.