Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 8.djvu/695

WOOLEIDGE V. m'keNNA. 681 �to process against infant defendants in removed causes falling within the very exceptional circumstances provided for in the eighth section of the act of congress, it would leave all the others where we were before, and we would have one piractice for infant parties to removed causes for one class of cases and another for all others. This intro- duees confusion into the practice, is an unsatisfactory and unneces- sary resuit, and, in my judgment; not sustainable upon sound prin- ciples. It is the true rule to adopt a eonstructioti which covers all caseSj and to require an infant defendant to be brought into the state court by proper prooeedings for that purpose before permitting ahy removal in his behalf by any one authorized to tnake it. Until that time there is, I think, technically or strictly speaking, no suit againist him to be removed. - This removial was, if these views be correct, premature, and the cause should be remailded on that account. �This would dispose of this motion without a consideration bf the question, so mtich argued, as to the citizenship of Maud B. McKenha, the infant defendant, who oannot, it is urged, have a separate citizenship from her father, who is, confessedly, a citizen of Ten- nessee. If this be 80 we could take no jurisdiction on account of difference of citizenship between the plaintiff and defendant. But as we could on account of the subject-matter, I would pass this perplexing question without the expression of any opinion, but for the fact that my judgment is not final, and it is proper that I should dispose of all the questions properly raised; and a,lso it is proper, in view of any subsequent proceedings for removal. As it is, I shall do no more than iutimate my judgment on that question, although I have given it a very careful consideration. I am satisfied that an infant child can acquire a separate citizenship or domi- cile from that of its father, if not for all purposes of nationality and change of statas in its relations to the statutes of descents and distribution, certainly to the estent of acquiring a forum, broadly speaking, in the courts bf the United States or of another state than that of which its father is a citizen. Or, as I may express it, for the purposes of judicial jurisdiction over the person, property, and right to sue and be sued of an infant, it may have a different citizenship from that of its father. It can acquire this only by that emancipation by the father which relinquishes his parental control over the subject. On principle I do not see why, if a father may of his own volition and arbitrarily change a child's domicile in all that the term implies, except, perhaps, that of its nationality, by simply changing his own domicile, he may uot by bther arbitrary acts db ��� �