Edward Douglass White

“ It follows necessarily, therefore, that although the Constitution did not limit the power of the states to create courts and to confer upon them such authority as might be deemed best for state purposes, that right could not, by its exertion, restrain or limit the power of the courts of the United States by bringing within the state judicial authority subjects which in their constitutional sense were nonjudicial in character, and therefore not within the implied or express limitation by which courts of the United States were restrained from staying judicial proceedings in state courts. ”

“ The court thus stated the origin of the statute as illustrative of its remedial scope (236 U.S. 123, 124, 35 Sup. Ct. 258, 59 L. Ed. 492) :
'In 1793, when that statute was adopted (1 Stat. 334) , courts of equity had a well-recognized power to issue writs of injunction to stay proceedings pending in court, in order to avoid a multiplicity of suits, to enable the defendant to avail himself of equitable defenses and the like. It was also true that the courts of equity of one state or country could enjoin its own citizens from prosecuting suits in another state or country. ”

“ The relief prayed was based on the ground that the effect of the ditch would be to draw off from the Little Calument river, an interstate stream, such a quantity of water as to seriously diminish the flow in that river and thereby practically cripple, if not destroy, the capacity of petitioner to continue to operate a plant for the production of electrical energy established and owned by it on the banks of the Little Calument in Cook county, Ill. ”