Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ The statutes do not purport to exclude the State Courts from jurisdiction except where they grant it to Courts of the United States. Therefore they do not affect the present case if it be true as has been unquestioned for three-quarters of a century that the Courts of the United States have no jurisdiction over divorce. If when the Constitution was adopted the common understanding was that the domestic relations of husband and wife and parent and child were matters reserved to the States, there is no difficulty in construing the instrument accordingly and not much in dealing with the statutes. ”

“ It is true that there may be objections of policy to one of our States intermeddling with the domestic relations of an official and subject of a foreign power that conceivably might regard jurisdiction as determined by nationality and not by domicil. ”

“ But on the other hand if, as seems likely, the wife was an American citizen, probably she remained one notwithstanding her marriage. Act Sept. 22, 1922, c. 411, § 3, 42 Stat. 1021, 1022 (8 USCA § 9) . ”