respect, they could not be conclusive or binding upon the
federal courts.[537]

Extension of the Tyson Case

For ninety-six years the Court followed this opinion, which the other
Justices saw only the evening before it was delivered, and which invoked
a precedent of Lord Mansfield on the law of the sea and an epigram of
Cicero on the law of nature.[538] Later decisions expanded the concept
of matters of a commercial nature so that the scope of the Tyson rule
was greatly extended.[539] In many instances the State courts followed
their own rules of decision even when contrary to the federal rules, so
that Justice Story's attempt at uniformity in matters of a commercial
nature paradoxically led to a greater diversity and to the mischief in
many instances of two conflicting rules of law in the same State, with
the outcome of suits dependent upon whether the case was docketed in a
State or a federal court. Simultaneously, the Supreme Court was holding
under the Tyson rule that the federal courts were not bound by decisions
of State courts interpreting State constitutions[540] or State
statutes.[541]

The Tyson Rule Protested

Moreover, decisions extending the scope of the Tyson rule were
frequently rendered by a divided Court over the strong protests of
dissenters.[542] In Baltimore and Ohio R. Co. _v._ Baugh,[543] which
further projected the Tyson rule into the law of torts in disregard of
State law, Justice Field wrote a sharp dissent in which he indicated an
opinion that the Supreme Court's disregard of State court decisions was
unconstitutional. Such disregard, nevertheless, was further aggravated
in Kuhn _v._ Fairmont Coal Co.,[544] where the Court held that in
construing a contract in a case involving real estate and mining law a
federal court was not bound by a West Virginia decision touching the
same subject. This evoked a provocative dissent from Justice Holmes, who
later wrote one of his more famous dissents in the Black and White
Taxicab Company case,[545] in which he asserted emphatically that the
Court's extensions of the Tyson rule were unconstitutional.[546]

ERIE RAILROAD CO. _v._ TOMPKINS; TYSON OVERRULED

Increasing criticism of the Tyson rule led to a restriction of it in
Mutual Life Ins. Co. _v._ Johnson,[547] where the Court chose to apply
Virginia decisions rather than exercise its independent judgment on the
ground that the case was "balanced with doubt."[548] The federal
judicial power wa