Venue (law)

“ The vast multitude that filled the body of the court, crowding every avenue and space, and even invading the seats reserved for the Bar, rose as one man, and turned to gaze on the living evidence of the description. It would be difficult to conceive a more striking scene enacted within walls where the solemnity of the law usually represses every semblance of popular emotion ”

“ A Grand Lodge will sometimes grant a warrant of constitution at once, without the previous exercise, on the part of the Grand Master, of his dispensing power. As it is, however, more usually the practice for the dispensation to precede the warrant of constitution, I shall explain the formation of a lodge according to that method. ”

“ Recognizing that § 51 of the Judicial Code, in cases where the jurisdiction is founded on diversity of citizenship, establishes venue as the place where the suit may be maintained for the convenience of the parties, and that the statutory venue for a suit of which the court has jurisdiction may be waived, we held that the corporation had waived objections to venue by its consent to the suit. ”

“ The warrant having been granted, there still remain certain forms and ceremonies to be observed, before the lodge can take its place among the legal and registered lodges of the jurisdiction in which it is situated. These are its consecration, its dedication, its constitution, and the installation of its officers. We shall not fully enter into a description of these various ceremonies, because they are laid down at length in all the Monitors, and are readily accessible to our readers. It will be sufficient if we barely allude to their character. ”

“ That all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theatres, and other places of public amusement, subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude. ”

“ THAT no Person within this Government, shall be licensed by the Governor to keep an Ordinary, Tavern, or House of publick Entertainment, but such who are first recommended to him, under the Hands of the Justices of the respective Counties, signed in open Court; which Justices are and shall be hereby impowered, to suppress and forbid any Person, keeping such Publick-house as aforesaid, upon their Misbehaviour, on such Penalties as the Law doth or shall direct; and to recommend others from Time to Time, as they shall see Occasion. ”

“ Each district court, or the judge thereof, shall appoint its clerk, who shall also be the register in chancery, and shall keep his office at the place where the court may be held. Writs of error, bills of exception, and appeals shall be allowed in all cases from the final decision of said district courts to the supreme court, under such regulations as may be prescribed by law ”

“ In other words, the Land Office is like any other tribunal-its institution and purpose defining and measuring its power, the determining elements being those of fact and law, upon which necessarily judgment must be passed. ”

“ It is under the guidance of these Committees that the Inns of Court have gained and maintained their position through the centuries, training the successive generations of barristers in the high traditions of honour and ability characteristic of the English Bar, and imparting to their youthful apprentices at the law, through the social system of ‘keeping terms,’ the unwritten rules of right conduct in the legal profession. ”

“ The lodge may, however, at its discretion, refuse to take up the consideration of such order; for the same body which determined at one time to consider a question, may at another time refuse to do so. This is one of those instances in which parliamentary usage is applicable to the government of a lodge. ”

“ Although I can find no ancient regulation on this subject, still, by the concurrent authority of all Grand Lodges in this country, at least, (for the Grand Lodge of England has no such provision in its Constitution,) every lodge is forbidden to initiate any person whose residence is nearer to any other lodge. If, however, such an initiation should take place, although the lodge would be censurable for its violation of the regulations of its superior, yet there has never been any doubt that the initiation would be good and the candidate so admitted regularly made. ”

“ Every lodge has the power to frame bye-laws for its own government, provided they are not contrary to, nor inconsistent with, the general regulations of the Grand Lodge; nor the landmarks of the order.45 But these bye-laws will not be valid, until they are submitted to and approved by the Grand Lodge. ”

“ If a lodge should have omitted for any causes to elect its officers or any of them on the constitutional night of election, or if any officer so elected shall have died, been deposed or removed from the jurisdiction subsequent to his election, the Grand Master may issue a dispensation empowering the lodge to proceed to an election or to fill the vacancy at any other specified communication ”

“ They build their great law court building (the architecture ecclesiastical) so as to provide an entrance hall of imposing proportions which they use once a year; and to get this fine hall they have to make their court rooms, which they must use all the time, dark and small and inaccessible. They think as much of that once-a-year ceremony of opening their courts as they think of the even justice that they dispense; somehow they feel that the justice depends on the ceremony. ”

“ You may either sue him for damages, or have him indicted and fined; and it is also said in England that the constable of the town, if his assistance is invoked, may force the recalcitrant publican to receive and entertain the guest. [22] If you sue him you will have to prove that he kept a common inn; [23] that you are a traveler, [24] and came to the inn and demanded to be received and lodged as a guest; that he had sufficient accommodation, [25] and refused to take you in, although you were in a fit and proper state to be received, [26] and offered to pay a reasonable sum for accommodation. ”

“ Certainly the High Court judges get better assistance from the Bar, or rather, I should say, more assistance—or should it be assistance of greater length?—but the County Court Bar of to-day contains the pick of the younger men, and is really the nursery of the common law Bar since it is only in the County Courts that a catholic experience in civil advocacy can be obtained. ”

“ My answer to that argument is that places of public amusement, within the meaning of the act of 1875, are such as are established and maintained under direct license of the law. The authority to establish and maintain them comes from the public. ”

“ Any other suit of a civil nature, at law or in equity, of which the district courts of the United States are given jurisdiction, in any State court, may be removed into the district court of the United States for the proper district by the defendant or defendants therein, being nonresidents of that State. ”

“ The essence of this case is to give fair scope to the role of § 1404 (a) in our system of venue regulations, that is, a system whereby litigation may be brought in only a limited number of federal districts, which are chosen generally upon the basis of presumed convenience. Two extremes are possible in the administration of such a system, duly mindful of the fact that in our jurisprudence venue does not touch the power of the court. (1) All venue may be determined solely by rigid rules, which the defendant may invoke and which work for convenience in the generality of cases. ”

“ In determining, then, who are the constitutional members of a Grand Lodge, deriving their membership from inherent right, I should say that they are the Masters and Wardens of all regular lodges in the jurisdiction, with the Grand Officers chosen by them. All others, who by local regulations are made members, are so only by courtesy, and not by prescription or ancient law. ”

“ There must be appointed a register of the land-office and a receiver of public moneys for each land-district established by law, to reside at the place where the land-office to which he is appointed is kept. ”

“ Chamber business may be done, and often is done, on the street, in the judge's own house, at the hotel where he stops, when absent from home, or it may be done in transitu, on the cars in going from one place to another within the proper jurisdiction to hold court. Mr. Justice Field could, as well, and as authoritatively, issue a temporary injunction, grant a writ of habeas corpus, an order to show cause, or do any other chamber business for the district in the dining-room at Lathrop, as at his chambers in San Francisco, or in the court-room. ”

“ Be it also known that a man who is from the court of the king or the barons ought not to lodge in the house of any citizen of London for three nights, either by privilege or by custom, except by consent of the host. ”

“ Rep. 207.
'As to natural persons, therefore, it cannot be doubted that the effect of this act, read in the light of earlier acts upon the same subject, and of the judicial construction thereof, is that the phrase 'district of the residence of' a person is equivalent to 'district whereof he is an inhabitant,' and cannot be construed as giving jurisdiction, by reason of citizenship, to a circuit court held in a state of which neither party is a citizen, but, on the contrary, restricts the jurisdiction to the district in which one of the parties resides, within the state of which he is a citizen ”

“ It is a matter of which this court will take judicial notice, that, by law, the country is divided into collection districts for internal revenue purposes, and in some States there are several of these districts, with defined geographical boundaries. ”

“ Of a like nature are regulations for changes of venue. They are designed to secure to parties a fair and impartial trial of their causes, which is the ultimate and highest purpose of judicial proceedings ”

“ Knowledge by congress of the boundaries of a state and of its political subdivisions may reasonably be presumed, as much of its legislation is affected by them, such as relate to the territorial jurisdiction of the courts of the United States, the extent of their collection districts, and of districts in which process, civil and criminal, of their courts may be served and enforced. ”

“ This instrument it is, indeed, not only the right but the duty of every strange visitor carefully to inspect, before he enters a lodge, that he may thus satisfy himself of the legality and regularity of its character and authority. On such a demand being made by a visitor for a sight of its Warrant, every lodge is bound to comply with the requisition, and produce the instrument. The same rule, of course, applies to lodges under dispensation, whose Warrant of Dispensation supplies the place of a Warrant of Constitution. ”

“ The number of patrons who may be accommodated at one time is prescribed by law and rigidly enforced, signs denoting the authorized capacity of the house being posted at the door, like the signs in elevators and on ferry-boats in America. ”

“ Any association having a supreme governing or legislative body and subordinate lodges or branches by whatever name known, into which members shall be elected, initiated and admitted in accordance with its constitution, laws, rules, regulations, and prescribed ritualistic ceremonies, which subordinate lodges or branches shall be required by such association to hold regular or stated meetings at least once in each month, shall be deemed to be operating under the lodge system. ”

“ In New York, the law is very similar, [188] being to the effect that the hotel-keeper shall not be liable for loss of money, jewels, ornaments, or valuables, when he shall have provided a safe for the custody of such property, and shall have posted a notice to that effect in the room occupied by the guest, and the guest shall have neglected to deposit such property in the safe. ”

“ Every man, whether inhabitant or foreigner, free or not free, shall have liberty to come to any public Court, Council, or Town Meeting, and either by speech or writing to move any lawful, seasonable, and material question, or to present any necessary motion, complaint, petition, bill, or information, whereof that meeting hath proper cognizance, so it be done in convenient time, due order, and respective manner. ”

“ You alone will fight this chancery suit through the lower and superior courts, and just before a sale of the land is ordered by the court of last resort, one of the non-resident lessees mast appear, and by virtue of the statutory provision applying to such cases, file his bill of review and open up the whole matter, enjoin the sale, fight the case over again and again through the superior court. ”

“ This judicial treatment of the subject of venue leads Congress and the parties to think of the choice of a forum as a private matter between litigants and in cases like the present obscures the public interest in venue practices behind a rather fantastic fiction that a widow is harassing the Illinois Central Railroad. ”

“ The chambers of the judge, where chambers are provided, are not an element of jurisdiction, but are a convenience to the judge, and to suitors—places where the judge at proper times can be readily found, and the business conveniently transacted. ”