David Josiah Brewer

“ While this court has been strenuous to uphold the supremacy of federal law, and the interpretation placed upon it by the federal courts, it has been equally strenuous to uphold the decisions by state courts of questions of purely local law. There should be, in all matters of a local nature, but one law within the state, and that law is not what this court might determine, but what the supreme court of the state has determined. A citizen of another state going into Michigan may be entitled under the federal constitution to all the privileges and immunities of citizens of that state ”

“ That statute came before the supreme court for examination in the case of Detroit v. Putnam, 45 Mich. 263, 7 N. W. Rep. 815, and it was held-First, that 'a statutory liability created in derogation to common law cannot be enlarged by construction;' and, secondly, that the act, omitting sidewalks, left the law in respect to sidewalks not in repair as it was before, and that no private action against the city for damages springing from a defective sidewalk could be maintained. ”