US SUPREME COURT DECISIONS

1. A system of state appellate practice (as in Illinois) which allows review of constitutional questions, with any others involved in the case, by direct appeal to the Supreme Court of the state, but provides that, if the appeal be taken to an intermediate court, empowered to review nonconstitutional questions, the constitutional questions shall be waived, is reasonable and valid as applied to a suitor who lost his opportunity to have his claim under the federal Constitution reviewed, in the state court or here, by appealing to the intermediate court. P. 269 U. S. 194.

2. An Illinois statute providing that " cases . . . in which the validity of a statute or construction of the Constitution is involved" chanrobles.com-red

Page 269 U. S. 191

shall be taken directly to the Supreme Court of the state, was construed by that court as including case involving the federal, as well as those involving the state, constitution, with the result that a party asserting a federal right was adjudged by that court to have waived it by appealing in the first instance to the intermediate appellate court. Held that a writ of error from this Court to the state Supreme Court must be dismissed, since the construction, even though not anticipated by any earlier decision, was not an unfair or unreasonable one amounting in its application to an obstruction of the federal right, and therefore this Court was bound by it. P. 269 U. S. 195.

Writ of error to review 309 Ill. 482 dismissed.

Error to review a judgment of the Supreme Court of Illinois, affirming a judgment of the Illinois Appellate Court which sustained a recovery by the city in an action against the telephone company to collect taxes levied on its poles in the city streets. See also 302 Ill. 362, 227 Ill.App. 424. chanrobles.com-red

Page 269 U. S. 192