to full constitutional privileges after the period of Civil War and Reconstruction.1

In the case of Stearns v. Minnesota (179 U. S., 223), it was held, however, that a Commonwealth, at the time of its admission, or at any other time, might enter into compacts as to property rights with the United States, which would continue binding upon it. Relative to a covenant required of and entered into by Minnesota at the time of her admission as a State not to tax land belonging to the United States, or to tax nonresident higher than resident purchasers of it, the Court said: "That these provisions of the enabling act and the Constitution [of Minnesota] in form at least, made a compact between the United States and the State, is evident. In an inquiry as to the validity of such a compact this distinction must at the outset be noticed. There may be agreements or compacts attempted to be entered into between the States, or between a State and the Nation, in reference to political rights and obligations, and there may be those solely in reference to property belonging to one or the other. That different considerations may underlie the question of the validity of these two kinds of agreements is obvious. It has often been said that a State admitted into the Union enters therein in full equality with all the others, and such equality may forbid any agreement or compact limiting or qualifying political rights and obligations; whereas, on the other hand, a mere agreement in reference to property involves no question of equality of

1 A case involving this point has recently been argued before the Supreme Court, and has not yet [1904] been decided.

status but only of the power of a State to deal with the Nation or with any other State in reference to such property. The case before us is one involving simply an agreement as to property between a State and the Nation. That a State and the Nation are competent to enter into an agreement of such a nature with one another has been affirmed in past decisions of this court, and that they have been frequently made in the admission of new States, as well as subsequently thereto, is a matter of history."

As has been seen, the Constitution does not attempt to fix the modus operandi in which new members are to be admitted into the Union. It does not even say whether they are to be formed from territory already under its sovereignty, and in one instance, that of Texas, a new State was received by the direct process of incorporating, by a joint resolution of Congress, a foreign, independent State. In all other cases, however, new States have been formed from areas already belonging to the United States and organized as territories.

The usual process by which these territories obtain statehood is as follows: The people of a territory petition Congress to grant them statehood. If that body is favorably disposed, a so-called "enabling act" is passed, authorizing the framing of a state constitution, prescribing the manner in which it shall be framed, and laying down certain requirements that must be met. All these conditions having been met, a resolution reciting this fact is passed by Congress, and the territory declared a State and admitted as such into the Union. In some cases the final step in the process

has been a Proclamation issued by the President in obedience to the direction of Congress.

The above has been the usual and regular process. In not a few instances, however, the inhabitants of territories have met in conventions and framed constitutions without first obtaining the authorization of Congress. The acceptance, however, by that body, of the instrument framed has been considered sufficient to validate the proceeding.

There has been some little constitutional speculation. as to whether the decisive, creative act in the bringing into existence of a new State is the Resolution of Congress approving the constitution that has been drawn up and declaring the former territory one of the States of the Union, or whether the vivifying force is derived from the constituent act of the people of the territory in framing and adopting their state constitution. The latter is the view most acceptable to the States' Rights school. It would seem to be sufficiently plain, however, that the former is the correct doctrine; for there can be no question but that it lies within the power of Congress arbitrarily to refuse its approval to a constitution that has been framed by the people of a territory strictly in accordance with the require

1 In Brownson's "American Republic," premising that the entrance of territories into the Union as States is the free act of the peoples of the respective territories, the argument was made that the States of the Southern Confederacy, by their ordinances of secession, in effect annulled these acts, and thus, ipso facto, relegated themselves to the status of territories, and as such came under the complete control of Congress for that body to " struct" their governments as it should see fit, and readmit them as States, and upon such terms, as it should approve.

recon

ments of the Enabling Act. The final, and therefore decisive step, has thus to be taken by the Federal Government.

This doctrine has, indeed, received judicial sanction at the hands of the United States Supreme Court in its decision in the case of Scott v. Jones (5 How., 343).1

1 Cf. Jameson, "Constitutional Convention," Sec. 207; "Opinions of U. S. Attorney-General," II, 726; and speech of H. W. Davis, in Appendix to Vol. XXXVII of the "Congressional Globe," pp. 261-262.

CHAPTER XIX

INTERSTATE RELATIONS

IN the chapters that have gone before there have been considered the constitutional relations which exist between the federal government upon the one side and state governments upon the other. In order to complete the account of the American Constitutional System it will now be necessary to give a description of the relations which exist between the several States themselves.

Except as otherwise specifically provided by the federal Constitution, the States of the American Union, when acting within the spheres of government reserved to them, stand toward one another as independent sovereign States. The laws of one State have, ex proprio vigore, no force, and its officials have no public authority, outside of its own boundaries.1

1 The general principles of interstate comity, that is, those principles that hold good in the field of the "Conflict of Laws" or Private International Law, apply, mutis mutandis, to the commonwealth members of the American Union in precisely the same manner that they do to sovereign independent States. Even a brief presentation of these principles would be outside of the province of this work. "The rules of private international law are taken notice of by the courts just as are the general principles of the common law; and the federal courts, like those