In Green v. Neal23 it was held that where a state court had changed its former construction of a law, the federal courts, upon a subsequent case coming before them, should do likewise and thus keep ever in accord with the latest decisions of the state courts. "The same reason," the opinion declares, " which influences this court to adopt the construction given to the local law in the first instance, is not less strong in favor of following it in the second, if the state tribunals should change the construction." The court, however, adds: "A reference is here made, not to a single adjudication, but to a series of decisions which shall settle the rule." And in Leffingwell v. Warren24 the court say: "The construction given to a statute of a State by the highest judicial tribunal of such State is regarded as a part of the statute, and is as binding upon the courts of the United States as the text (citing numerous cases). If the highest judicial tribunal of a State adopt new views as to the proper construction of such statute, and reverse its former decisions, this court will follow the latest settled adjudications." Here again it will be observed that the court is careful to say not that it will always follow the latest construction of the state courts but the "latest settled adjudications."

It would appear then from these and other cases that though in general the federal courts when called upon to apply state laws will follow the last interpretation given to them by the respective state courts, this will not necessarily be done where a change of construction by the state courts has been a recent one, and not supported by such a line of decisions as to have become, to use the language of the opinion in Shelby v. Guy,25 "a fixed and received construction," and especially where the construction is one that for a considerable period of time has been the uniformly accepted one in the state courts.

22 Cf. Bates, Federal Procedure at Law. 23 6 Pet. 291; 8 L. ed. 402. 24 2 Black, 599; 17 L. ed. 261.

As will later appear,26 the Supreme Court has held quite firmly to the doctrine that the construction by the state courts of the law relating to real property is to be followed by the federal courts, but in the recent case of Kuhn v. Fairmont Coal Co.,27 decided January 3, 1910, the court hold that this shall be the practice only where the state determinations have become established rules of property and action prior to the accruing of the rights of the parties litigant. In this case prior adjudications are reviewed and explained, the language employed in East Central Eureka Min. Co. v. Central Eureka Mm. Co.28 and Brine v. Hartford Fire Ins. Co.29 being especially defined and restrained.30

25 11 Wh. 361; 6 L. ed. 495.

26 Section 600.

27 30 Sup. Ct. Rep. 140.

28 204 U. S. 266; 27 Sup. Ct. Rep. 258; 51 L. ed. 476.

29 96 U. S. 627; 24 L. ed. 858.

30 The following are given as rules that are "no longer to be questioned."

"1. When administering state laws and determining rights accruing under those laws, the jurisdiction of the federal courts is an independent one, not subordinate to, but co-ordinate and concurrent with, the jurisdiction of the state courts.

"2. Where, before the rights of the parties accrued, certain rules relating to real estate have been so established by state decisions as to become rules of property and action in the state, those rules are accepted by the federal court as authoritative declarations of the law of the State.

"3. But where the law of the State has not been thus settled, it is not only the right, but the duty, of the federal court to exercise its own judgment, as it also always does when the case before it depends upon doctrines of commercial law and general jurisprudence.

"4. So. when contracts and transactions are entered into and rights have accrued under a particular state or local decision, or where there has been no