U.S. Supreme Court GULLY v. FIRST NAT. BANK, 299 U.S. 109 (1936)

[Page 299 U.S. 109, 118]

surance Co., 224 N.Y. 47, 51, 120 N.E. 86, 13 A.L.R. 875; Leyland Shipping Co. v. Norwich Fire Insurance Society, (1918) A.C. 350, 369; AEtna Insurance Co. v. Boon, , 130; Milwaukee & St. Paul R. Co. v. Kellogg, 94 U.S. 469, 474. Instead, there has been a selective process which picks the substantial causes out of the web and lays the other ones aside. As in problems of causation, so here in the search for the underlying law. If we follow the ascent far enough, countless claims of right can be discovered to have their source or their operative limits in the provisions of a federal statute or in the Constitution itself with its circumambient restrictions upon legislative power. To set bounds to the pursuit, the courts have formulated the distinction between controversies that are basic and those that are collateral, between disputes that are necessary and those that are merely possible. We shall be lost in a maze if we put that compass by.

The judgment should be reversed and the cause remitted to the District Court, with instructions to remand it to the court in Mississippi from which it was removed.

REVERSED.

Mr. Justice STONE took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.