A writ of error will not lie from this Court to review a
judgment of the circuit court of appeals in a case presenting
neither diversity of citizenship nor federal question, which was
taken to that court from the Supreme Court of Hawaii, pursuant to
Judicial Code, § 246, as amended by the Act of January 28, 1915, 38
Stat. 803, c. 22, upon the basis of pecuniary amount alone.
Judicial Code, § 241, empowering this Court to review judgments
of circuit courts of appeals "not made final by the provisions of
this Title," etc., held inapplicable.
The case is stated in the opinion. For the opinion of the
circuit court of appeals,
see 232 F. 809.
Page 242 U. S. 2
MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court.
On writ of error prosecuted from the court below to a judgment
of the Supreme Court of Hawaii, rendered in a case where there was
no federal question and no diversity of citizenship, the judgment
was affirmed and the case was brought here. By a motion to dismiss,
our jurisdiction is disputed, and to dispose of it requires a
consideration of § 246 of the Judicial Code, as amended by the act
of January 28, 1915, 38 Stat. 803, c. 22.
That amendment provides, first, that
"writs of error and appeals from the final judgments and decrees
of the Supreme Court of the Territory of Hawaii and of the Supreme
Court of Porto Rico may be taken and prosecuted to the Supreme
Court of the United States . . . in the same classes of cases, in
which writs of error and appeals from the final judgments and
decrees of the highest court of a state in which a decision in the
suit could be had, may be taken and prosecuted to the Supreme Court
of the United States . . ."
And this is immediately followed by a provision giving power to
this Court to review by certiorari "in all other cases, civil or
criminal, in the Supreme Court of the Territory of Hawaii or the
Supreme Court of Porto Rico." The next and separate sentence which
follows these provisions and which concludes the amendment is
this:
"Writs of error and appeals from the final judgments and decrees
of the Supreme Courts of the Territory of Hawaii and of Porto Rico,
wherein the amount involved, exclusive of costs, . . . exceeds the
value of $5,000, may be taken and prosecuted in the circuit courts
of appeals."
The argument supporting jurisdiction is that as, by the
Page 242 U. S. 3
general provisions of the judiciary Act of 1891, now embraced in
§ 241 of the Judicial Code, power exists in this Court to review by
error or appeal the final decisions of the circuit courts of
appeals in all cases where the jurisdiction of the trial court did
not depend upon diversity of citizenship, or where the case was not
otherwise by provisions of law expressly made final in the circuit
courts of appeals, therefore power to review exists, since this
case is not in one of the excepted classes. But the contention
overlooks the fact that, from the beginning and continuously up to
the adoption of the amendment of 1915, appeals and writs of error
to the Supreme Courts of Hawaii and of Porto Rico were not left to
be controlled by the law generally applicable to courts of the
United States, as expressed in the judiciary Act of 1891, or as
found in the provisions of the Judicial Code, readopting that act,
but were governed by special provisions controlling the subject --
a purpose which is exemplified by the terms of the amendatory Act
of 1915. This is plain when it is considered that the two classes
of cases enumerated in the amendment of 1915 were practically in
the same terms expressed in the prior acts, which conferred
reviewing jurisdiction in both classes exclusively upon this Court,
and that the only substantial change made by the amendatory act was
to take from this Court the jurisdiction to review in the second
enumerated class and confer it upon the circuit court of appeals to
which Hawaii belonged. And, indeed, there is nothing in the context
of the statute which countenances the view that the statute
intended to merely take away the jurisdiction of this Court in one
class of cases, and, at the same time, to restore jurisdiction as
to the same class by means of a power conferred or contemplated to
exist to review on error or appeal the judgments and decrees of the
circuit court of appeals. Besides, as the remedy intended to be
afforded by the amendment of 1915 was evidently the restricting of
the jurisdiction
Page 242 U. S. 4
of this Court, to the end that the burden on its docket might be
lightened, we cannot construe that amendment as frustrating the
purpose which it was adopted to accomplish.
American Security
Co. v. District of Columbia, 224 U. S. 491,
224 U. S.
495.
Dismissed for want of jurisdiction.