In the 1914 case of Mercelis v. Wilson, the U.S Supreme Court addressed a dispute over property rights and inheritance laws. The petitioner, Mercelis, was an heir to a piece of land in Louisiana that had been sold by his father's estate to pay off debts. However, he argued that under Belgian law (his father being a citizen of Belgium), real estate could not be used to settle personal debt without consent from all heirs - thus making the sale invalid. The court disagreed with this argument on two grounds: firstly because it found no evidence supporting such provision in Belgian law; secondly because even if such provision existed, it would not apply as Louisiana state law governed how estates were settled within its jurisdiction regardless of foreign citizenship status or laws thereof. Therefore, the court ruled against Mercelis and upheld validity of the sale.

In the dissenting opinion for Mercelis v. Wilson, it was argued that the majority's decision to deny a writ of habeas corpus was incorrect. The dissenting justices believed that there were serious questions about whether or not Mercelis had been given a fair trial in state court and if his constitutional rights had been violated. They felt that these issues warranted further investigation by federal courts, rather than simply deferring to the judgment of the state courts as the majority did. Furthermore, they disagreed with how narrowly the majority interpreted federal jurisdiction over cases involving potential violations of constitutional rights by states. In their view, this interpretation undermined one of key roles assigned to federal judiciary under Constitution - protecting individual liberties from encroachments by states.