REQUISITES AND VALIDITY. To be valid, judicial judgment must be given by a tent judge or .court, at a time and place pointed by law, and in the form it requires.
A judgment would be null if the judge had not jurisdiction of the matter, or, having such jurisdiction, he exercised it when there was no court held, or out of his district, or if he rendered a judgment before the cause was prepared for a hearing.
The judgment must confine itself to the question raised before the court, and cannot extend beyond it. For example, where the plaintiff sues for an injury committed on his lands by animals owned and kept care lessly by defendant, the judgment may be for damages, but it cannot command the defend ant for the future to keep his cattle out of the plaintiff's land. That would be to usurp the power of the legislature. A judgment de clares the rights which belong to the citizen, the law alone rules future actions. The law commands all men, it is the same for all be cause it is general ; judgments are particular decisions, which apply only to particular per sons, and bind no others ; they vary like the circumstances on which they are founded.
"The validity of a judgment is to be de termined by the laws in force when it is ren dered, and is not affected by subsequent changes therein ;" Anderson v. Hotel Co., 92
Va. 687, 24 S. E. 269. "A judgment is not void merely because it is not dated ;" v. Lane, 93 Ia. 83, 65 N. W. 380. Courts should not render judgments which cannot be enforced by any process known to the law; Johnson v. Malloy, 74 Cal. 430, 16 Pac. 228. "In an action at law the court cannot render a conditional judgment ;" Coh v. Bright, 2 Mo. App. Rep'r 1191.
The jurisdiction of a foreign court over the person or the subject-matter embraced in the judgment or decree of such court is al ways open to inquiry, and in this respect a court of another state is to be regarded as a foreign court ; Grover & B. Sewing Mach. Co. v. Radcliffe, 137 U. S. 287, 11 Sup. Ct. 92, 34 L. Ed. 670; and a judgment in a state court having jurisdiction of the subject-matter and the parties, is binding upon the parties there to in a suit in another state between the same parties, where the subject-matter and the issues are the same as in the former suit ; Carpenter v. Strange, 141 U. S. 87, 11 Sup. Ct. 960, 35 L. Ed. 640.