| Venue: | SCOTUS |
| Facts: | Sill wants to recover the amount of a bond and mortgage that had been assigned to him by the Bank of Michigan. |
| Posture: | Sheldon says that because the bond was initially given from one Michiganer to another, there's no federal jurisdiction here. Apparently the lower court thought there was jurisdiction. |
| Issue: | Is there jurisdiction? Does § 11 of the Judiciary Act, which keeps the court from taking suits "to recover the contents of promissory notes or other choses in favor of an assignee, unless a suit might have been prosecuted in that court to recover the contents" bar this suit? Is the judiciary act in conflict with the constitution? |
| Holding: | No. Yes. No. Reversed. |
| Rule: | Courts created by statute can have no jurisdiction but what the statute confers. |
| Reasoning: | The Judiciary Act forbids the courts from taking jurisdiction when the parties are thus situated. The constitution defines the outer limits of judicial power, but doesn't tell congress how much of it to dole out. As long as the jurisdiction grant doesn exceed the constitution, there's no conflict. |
| Dicta: | |