Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ We need not consider what other States may refuse to do, but we deem it established that they cannot attach to membership rights against the Company that are refused by the law of the domicil. It does not matter that the member joined in another State. In the above cited case Green became a member of a Massachusetts corporation in New York, and the State Court held on ordinary principles of contract that his rights were governed by New York law. ”

“ The indivisible unity between the members of a corporation of this kind in respect of the fund from which their rights are to be enforced and the consequence that their rights must be determined by a single law, is elaborated in Supreme Council of the Royal Arcanum v. Green, 237 U.S. 531, 542, 35 S.C.t. 724, 59 L. Ed. 1089, L. R. A. 1916A, 771. The act of becoming a member is something more than a contract, it is entering into a complex and abiding relation, and as marriage looks to domicil, membership looks to and must be governed by the law of the State granting the incorporation. ”

“ The result is that if the validity of the by-law ought to be determined by the laws of Illinois, the plaintiff is allowed to recover upon a state of facts which the contract expressly stipulates shall not give her that right. ”