ave created courts and endowed them with such jurisdiction as, in the
judgment of their legislatures, seemed appropriate.[760] Whether
legislative action in such matters is deemed to be wise or proves
efficient, whether it works a particular hardship on a particular
litigant, or perpetuates or supplants ancient forms of procedure are
issues which can give rise to no conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment;
for the latter's function is negative rather than affirmative and in no
way obligates the States to adopt specific measures of reform.[761]

Pleading and Practice

Commencement Of Actions.--A State may impose certain conditions
on the right to institute litigation. Thus, access to the courts may be
denied to persons instituting stockholders' derivative actions unless
reasonable security for the costs, and fees incurred by the corporation
is first tendered. Nor is the retroactive application of this statutory
requirement to actions pending at the time of its adoption violative of
due process as long as no new liability for expenses incurred before
enactment is imposed thereby, and the only effect thereof is to stay
such proceedings until the security is furnished.[762] Moreover, when a
nonresident files suit in a local court, the State, as the price of
opening its tribunals to such plaintiff, may exact the condition that
the former stand ready to answer all cross-actions filed and accept any
_in personam_ judgments obtained by a resident defendant through service
of process or appropriate pleading upon the plaintiff's attorney of
record.[763] For similar reasons, the requirements, without excluding
other evidence, of a chemical analysis as a condition precedent to a
suit to recover damages resulting to crops from allegedly deficient
fertilizers is not deemed to be arbitrary or unreasonable.[764]

Pleas in Abatement.--State legislation which forbids a
defendant to come into court and challenge the validity of service upon
him in a personal action without thereby surrendering himself to the
jurisdiction of the Court, but which does not restrain him from
protecting his substantive rights against enforcement of a judgment
rendered without service of process, is constitutional and does not
deprive him of property without due process of law. Such a defendant, if
he please, may ignore the proceedings as wholly ineffective, and set up
the invalidity of the judgment if and when an attempt is made to take
his property thereun