Howell Edmunds Jackson

“ Wheeler, 1 Black, 286, it was said by this court that 'a corporation exists only in contemplation of law, and by force of law, and can have no legal existence beyond the bounds of the sovereignty by which it was created, and it must dwell in the place of its creation;' and, further, that 'a corporation is not a citizen, within the meaning of the constitution, and cannot maintain a suit in the courts of the United States against a citizen of a different state from that by which it was created, unless the persons who composed the corporate body are all citizens of that state. ”

“ The laws of Texas, requiring a railroad corporation to have a principal office where its books shall be kept, can in no way affect the jurisdiction of the federal courts over such corporate body, founded as it is upon the conclusive presumption that the members of such corporation are citizens of the state which created the body corporate. Having a principal office does not restrict the citizenship of the corporation, or of its members, to the particular locality where such office is kept. ”

“ Congress did not mean to broadly confer jurisdiction of a controversy between an alien and a citizen in the first clause of the act, and then, in the subsequent clause, restrict that jurisdiction by the word 'inhabitant,' so as to limit such jurisdiction to the residence of the alien or of the citizen. ”