United States v. Drennen et al.
jurisdiction is vested by the laws of the United States. 11 Peters, 175.
To allow State laws to affect or impair the jurisdiction of the federal courts, or to arrest the remedies in those courts, would be to virtually abolish them at pleasure. Even then, if it were true, that by the laws of Arkansas a judgment against an administrator cannot be executed or enforced otherwise than by an application to the probate court, it could have no effect in this forum, because, as we have seen, the right of rendering judgments andissuing executions thereon, against the representatives of deceased persons, is clearly conferred on the courts of the United States by acts of congress, and must necessarily supersede any State regulations in conflict with them. The laws of the several States only become rules of decision in trials at common law in the federal courts, in cases where they apply, and where the constitution, treaties, or statutes of the United States do not provide a different rule. 1. Stat. 92; 11 Wheat. 361; 6 Peters, 291; 4 McLean, 607. But the position is not sound; because there is nothing, as I can perceive, in the laws of Arkansas forbidding the execution of a judgment against an administrator in his representative capacity. On the contrary, it would appear to be allowable, because the right of the circuit courts to pronounce judgments de bonis testatoris is clearly inferable from the provisions of the statute authorizing actions pending against the deceased to be revived against his representative; and also actions generally to be instituted against executors and administrators, in the circuit courts, after the death of the intestate or testator. Rev. Stat. 81. And then steps in the eighth section of the execution law, which provides, in substance, that when an execution shall be issued against any person as heir, devisee, executor, or administrator, the officer to whom the same shall be directed shall be commanded, that of the goods and chattels which were of the ancestor, testator, or intestate at the time of his death, he cause to be made the debt, damages, and costs; for want of goods and chattels, then, real estate which was of the deceased at the time of his death, must be seized to satisfy the execution. Rev. Stat. 375. It is very clear from this section, that an exe-
