Melville Fuller

“ It is not sufficient, for the maintenance of our jurisdiction to review the judgments of state courts, that a right, title, privilege, or immunity under the constitution of the United States may have been claimed, but such right, title, privilege, or immunity must have been denied. Assuming that plaintiff in error, by her replication of January 27, 1891, duly set up a right of protection under the constitution, yet, if she were debarred from asserting property rights in the estate of John Arthur, as his widow, then that right was not denied for want of the subject-matter to be protected. ”

“ By stipulation of record, plaintiff in error admitted at the trial that, the invalidity of the divorce decrees being conceded, the only question to be tried was whether she was 'estopped by her conduct, as alleged in said answer, to dispute or contest the validity of said decrees, or whether she has ratified them by her conduct.'
That question was determined against her, and the judgment rested solely on the ground that she could not, under the facts, be allowed, as to John Arthur's personal estate, to assert the property rights conferred by law upon a widow. ”

“ Ct. 131, it was ruled that a decision by the supreme judicial court of Massachusetts that a creditor of an insolvent debtor, who proved his debt in insolvency proceedings under the state statutes, and accepted the benefits thereof, thereby waived any right he might otherwise have had to object to the validity of the insolvency statutes, as impairing the obligation of contracts, presented no federal question for review. ”