by critics of the decision at the time. In
point of fact, they have been largely avoided, because most of the State
courts have continued to give judicial recognition and full faith and
credit to one another's divorce proceedings on the basis of the older
idea that a divorce proceeding is one _in rem_, and that if the
applicant is _bona fide_ domiciled in the State the court has
jurisdiction in this respect. Moreover, until the second of the Williams
_v._ North Carolina cases[54] was decided in 1945, there had not been
manifested the slightest disposition to challenge judicially the power
of the States to determine what shall constitute domicile for divorce
purposes. Shortly prior thereto, in 1938, the Court in Davis _v._
Davis[55] rejected contentions adverse to the validity of a Virginia
decree of which enforcement was sought in the District of Columbia. In
this case, a husband, after having obtained in the District a decree of
separation subject to payment of alimony, established years later a
residence in Virginia, and sued there for a divorce. Personally served
in the District, where she continued to reside, the wife filed a plea
denying that her husband was a resident of Virginia and averred that he
was guilty of a fraud on the court in seeking to establish a residence
for purposes of jurisdiction. In ruling that the Virginia decree,
granting to the husband an absolute divorce minus any alimony payment,
was enforceable in the District, the Court stated that in view of the
wife's failure, while in Virginia litigating her husband's status to
sue, to answer the husband's charges of wilful desertion, it would be
unreasonable to hold that the husband's domicile in Virginia was not
sufficient to entitle him to a divorce effective in the District. The
finding of the Virginia court on domicile and jurisdiction was declared
to bind the wife. Davis _v._ Davis is distinguishable from the Williams
_v._ North Carolina decisions in that in the former, determination of
the jurisdictional prerequisite of domicile was made in a contested
proceeding, while in the Williams cases it was not.

Williams I and II

In the Williams I and Williams II cases, the husband of one marriage and
the wife of another left North Carolina, obtained six-week divorce
decrees in Nevada, married there, and resumed their residence in North
Carolina where both previously had been married and domiciled.
Prosecuted for bigamy, the defendants relied upon