URQUHART, SHERIFF,
v.
BROWN.
Supreme Court of United States.
*181 Mr. E.C. Macdonald, with whom Mr. John D. Atkinson, Attorney General of the State of Washington, Mr. A.J. Falknor and Mr. J.R. Buxton were on the brief, for appellant.
No counsel appeared for appellee.
MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, after making the foregoing statement, delivered the opinion of the court.
It is the settled doctrine of this court that although the Circuit Courts of the United States, and the several justices and judges thereof, have authority, under existing statutes, to discharge, upon habeas corpus, one held in custody by state authority in violation of the Constitution or of any treaty or law of the United States, the court, justice or judge has a discretion as to the time and mode in which the power so conferred shall be exerted; and that in view of the relations existing, under our system of government, between the judicial tribunals of the Union and of the several States, a Federal court or a Federal judge will not ordinarily interfere by habeas corpus with the regular course of procedure under state authority, but will leave the applicant for the writ of habeas corpus to exhaust the remedies afforded by the State for determining whether he is illegally restrained of his liberty. After the highest court of the State, competent under the state law *182 to dispose of the matter, has finally acted, the case can be brought to this court for reexamination. The exceptional cases in which a Federal court or judge may sometimes appropriately interfere by habeas corpus in advance of final action by the authorities of the State are those of great urgency that require to be promptly disposed of, such, for instance, as cases "involving the authority and operations of the General Government, or the obligations of this country to, or its relations with, foreign nations." The present case is not within any of the exceptions recognized in our former decisions. If the applicant felt that the decision, upon habeas corpus, in the Supreme Court of the State was in violation of his rights under the Constitution or laws of the United States, he could have brought the case by writ of error directly from that court to this court.[1] In Reid v. Jones,
Without now expressing any opinion as to the constitutionality of the statute in question, or as to the mode in which it was administered in the state court, for the reasons stated the judgment of the Circuit Court must be reversed, with directions to set aside the order discharging the appellee, and to enter an order denying the application for a writ of habeas corpus, leaving the appellee in the custody of the State, with liberty to apply for a writ of error to review the above judgment of the Supreme Court of Washington.
It is so ordered.
NOTES
Notes
[1] Ex parte Royall,