William Howard Taft

“ The plaintiff in error had exhausted every means to test the question in the Supreme Court of Missouri, and had lost, and on the second hearing a writ of error properly lay to the highest court to which the case could be taken, which was the intermediate court. ”

“ If he elects to take his case to the Appellate Court, he may have the nonconstitutional questions considered and decided, but he gives up the right to raise constitutional objections in any court. There is some complaint that counsel could not infer that the constitutional questions referred to in the statute were federal questions, because the Supreme Court of Illinois had not so decided before this case. ”

“ It seems to us that the practice under the statute of Illinois above quoted is entirely fair. If the litigant has a constitutional question, federal or state, he may take the case directly to the Supreme Court and have that question decided, together with all the other questions in the case, and then, if the federal constitutional question is decided against him, he may bring it here by writ of error or application for certiorari. ”