By various acts of Congress rights have been granted to defendants to remove into federal courts civil actions begun in state courts, where there is a diversity of citizenship of the parties. This right, which will be more fully discussed in a later chapter,13 is granted, not that federal supremacy may be maintained, but that an impartial tribunal may be secured in'suits in which citizens of different States are parties. One important question, however, with reference to the maintenance of federal authority, has arisen in connection with the right of removal based upon diversity of citizenship, and this is as to the authority of the States to prevent foreign corporations from exercising this federal privilege by making it a condition precedent to their being allowed to enter the State or to continue to do business therein that, when sued by a citizen of the State, they will not have the cause removed into the federal courts. Here it is apparent that the question is not so much the right of the State to interfere with the exercise by a federal court of its jurisdiction when obtained, as it is to prevent that jurisdiction from being invoked.

10 By Act of 18G7 (Rev. Stat., Sec. 700), the Supreme Court was given this power without reference to whether or not the ease had been previously remanded. That act provides. "the Supreme Court may, at their discretion, proceed to a final decision and award execution, or remand the case to the inferior court."

11 Prigg v. Pennsylvania (16 Pet. 539; 10 L. ed. 1060).

12 U. S. v. Circuit Court (126 Fed. Rep. 169).

That States cannot put restrictions upon the removal of cases from their courts to federal tribunals any more than they can prevent it was declared in a case arising under a statute of the State of Wisconsin which provided that insurance companies of other States desiring to do business within its limits should sign a written agreement that they would not remove to the federal courts suits brought against them in the State's courts. One of these companies, having removed a case to the federal courts notwithstanding its agreement not to do so, the Wisconsin courts, ignoring the fact of its removal, proceeded with the case and rendered judgment against the company. The Supreme Court of the United States, upon appeal to it, declared the judgment void upon the ground that the agreement itself and the statute requiring it were illegal, as no one could be compelled to bind himself in advance not to exercise a right guaranteed to him by the Constitution any more than he could barter away his life or freedom.14

When, however, in a later case, the Supreme Court of the United States was asked to issue an injunction forbidding the Secretary of State of Wisconsin to revoke the license of an insurance company that had violated its agreement not to remove, that court held that it could not thus control the action of a state official, even though his action was apparently based upon an improper ground. The court said: "The argument that the revocation in question is made for an unconstitutional reason cannot be sustained. The suggestion confounds an act with an emotion or a mental proceeding which is not the subject of inquiry in determining the validity of a statute."15 In other words it was held that the right both of granting and of revoking a license to a foreign corporation to do business within a State belonging to the proper officer of that State, it was not within the competence of a federal court to determine whether that power was exercised for a good or bad reason or for no reason at all.

13 See Chapter L (The Federal Judiciary Organization. 548. Constitutional Provisions).

14 Home Insurance Co. v. Morse (20 Wall. 445; 22 L. ed. 365).

But when, in a still later case, there was drawn into question the operation of a statute of Iowa which declared that upon the violation by a foreign insurance company of its agreement not to remove a case to the federal courts, its license should thereby become void, the federal Supreme Court held that the violation of an illegal agreement could not of itself operate as a revocation of the company's license. If revoked at all it would have to be by the act of a competent state official, and not, ipso facto, by the exercise of a constitutional right.16

This entire subject was reviewed in Security Mutual Life Insurance Co. v. Prewitt17 in which it was held that a State may by statute provide that if a foreign insurance company shall remove to a federal court a case which has been commenced in a state court, the license of such company to do business within the State shall thereupon be revoked. In its opinion the court say: "It is admitted that a State has power to prevent a company from coming into its domain, and that it has the power to take away the right to remain after having been permitted once to enter, and that right may be exercised from good or bad motives; but what the company denied [in this case] is the right of a State to enact in advance that if a company remove a case to a federal court, its license shall be revoked. We think this distinction is not well founded. The truth is that the effect of the statute is simply to place foreign companies upon a par with the domestic ones doing business in Kentucky. No stipulation or agreement being re-auired as a condition for coming into the State and obtaining a permit to do business therein, the mere enactment of a statute which, in substance, says if you choose to exercise your right to remove a case into a federal court, your right to further do business within the State shall cease and your permit shall be withdrawn, is not open to any constitutional objection. The reasoning in the Doyle case we think is good."18

15 Doyle v. Continental Insurance Co. (94 U. S. 535; 24 L. ed. 148). 16Barron v. Burnside (121 V. S. 186; 7 Sup. Ct. Rep. 931; 30 L. ed. 915). 17 202 U. S. 246; 26 Sup. Ct. Rep. 619; 50 L. ed. 1013.

From the foregoing cases it is apparent that no abandonment is really made of the principle that the States are constitutionally incompetent to interfere with or prohibit the exercise of a federal right. Corporations chartered in one State and doing business in another State may exercise the right of removal given them by the federal statutes without reference to what the laws of the States in which they are doing business may provide, and this they may do even if they have contracted with those state authorities not to exercise these rights. The fact that the state authorities, in the exercise of a power acknowledged to be possessed by them, withdraw, or threaten to withdraw, a privilege which they have granted, furnishes no ground for federal relief. There is, to be sure, a causal nexus between the exercise of the federal right of removal and of the State's right to withdraw its permission to the foreign corporation to do business within the State's limits. But, legally speaking, there is no connection. Each is the exercise of an independent right. The case is not similar to one where the State interferes with or hinders the operation of a federal agency, as, for example, the taxation of its franchise. In the cases above considered, no attempt is made by the States to declare what cases shall and what cases shall not be removed into the federal courts, or in any way to interfere with the exercise of their jurisdiction by those courts after the cases have been removed into them. Whenever this has been attempted the federal courts have prevented it. Thus it has been repeatedly declared that the jurisdiction conferred upon the federal courts cannot be in any way abridged or impaired by the statutes of a State.19