" 'When the jurisdiction of the court is exercised according to the rules of international law, as in the case where the parties have their domicile within its forum, its decree dissolving their marriage ought to be respected by the tribunals of every civilized country. * * * On the other hand, a decree of divorce a vinculo, pronounced by a court whose jurisdiction is solely derived from some rule of municipal law peculiar to its forum, cannot, when it trenches upon the interests of any other country to whose tribunals the spouses were amenable, claim extraterritorial authority.'

"IV. The contention that if the power of one state to decree a dissolution of a marriage which would be compulsory upon the other state be limited to cases where both parties are subject to the jurisdiction, the right to obtain a divorce could be so hampered and restricted as to be in effect impossible of exercise, is but to insist that in order to favor the dissolution of marriage and to cause its permanency to depend upon the mere caprice or wrong of the parties, there should not be applied to the right to obtain a divorce those fundamental principles which safeguard the exercise of the simplest rights. In other words, the argument but reproduces the fallacy already exposed, which is, that one state must be endowed with the attribute of destroying the authority of all the others concerning the dissolution of marriage in order to render such dissolution easy of procurement. But even if the true and controlling principles be for a moment put aside and mere considerations of inconvenience be looked at, it would follow that the preponderance of inconvenience would be against the contention that a state should have the power to exert its authority concerning the dissolution of marriage as to those not amenable to its jurisdiction. By the application of that rule each state is given the power of overshadowing the authority of all the other states, thus causing the marriage tie to be less protected than any other civil obligation, and this to be accomplished by destroying individual rights without a hearing and by tribunals having no jurisdiction. Further, the admission that jurisdiction in the courts of one state over one party alone was the test of the right to dissolve the marriage tie as to the other party although domiciled in another state, would at once render such test impossible of general application. In other words, the test, if admitted, would destroy itself. This follows, since, if that test were the rule, each party to the marriage in one state would have a right to acquire a domicile in a different state and there institute proceedings for divorce. It would hence necessarily arise that domicile would be no longer the determinative criterion; but the mere race of diligence between the parties in seeking different forums in other states, or the celerity by which in such states judgments of divorce might be procured, would have to be considered in order to decide which forum was controlling.

"On the other hand, the denial of the power to enforce in another state a decree of divorce rendered against a person who was not subject to the jurisdiction of the state in which the decree was rendered obviates all the contradictions and inconveniences which are above indicated. It leaves uncurtailed the legitimate power of all the states over a subject peculiarly within their authority, and thus not only enables them to maintain their public policy but also to protect the individual rights of their citizens. It does not deprive a state of the power to render a decree of divorce susceptible of being enforced within its borders as to the person within the jurisdiction and does not debar other states from giving such effect to a judgment of that character as they may elect to do under mere principles of state comity. It causes the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution to operate upon decrees of divorce in the respective states just as that clause operates upon other rights; that is, it compels all the states to recognize and enforce a judgment of divorce rendered in other states where both parties were subject to the jurisdiction of the state in which the decree was rendered, and it enables the states rendering such decrees to take into view for the purpose of the exercise of their authority the existence of a matrimonial domicile from which the presence of a party not physically present within the borders of a state may be constructively found to exist.

"Having thus disposed of the reasoning advanced to sustain the assertion that the courts of the state of New York were bound by the full faith and credit clause to give full effect to the Connecticut decree, we are brought to consider the authorities relied upon to support that proposition.

"Whilst the continental and English authorities are not alluded to in the argument, it may be well, in the most summary way, to refer to them as means of illustrating the question for consideration. The extent of the power which independent sovereignties exercised over the dissolution of the marriage tie, as to their own citizens, gave rise, in the nature of things, to controversies concerning the extraterritorial effect to be given to a dissolution of such tie when made between citizens of one country by judicial tribunals of another country in which such citizens had become domiciled. We do not deem it essential, however, to consider the conflicting theories and divergent rules of public policy which were thus engendered. We are relieved of the necessity of entering upon such an inquiry, since it cannot be doubted that neither the practice nor the theories controlling in the countries on the continent lend the slightest sanction to the contention that a government, simply because one of the parties to a marriage was domiciled within its borders, where no matrimonial domicile ever existed, had power to render a decree dissolving a marriage which on principles of international law was entitled to obligatory extraterritorial effect as to the other party to the marriage, a citizen of another country. 1 Wharton, Conf. Laws (3d Ed.), 441, Sec. 209, and notes.