Tennessee v. Whitworth was a United States Supreme Court case that addressed the issue of whether a state could prosecute a person for a crime committed in another state. The case involved a man named Whitworth who was accused of stealing a horse in Tennessee and then fleeing to Arkansas. Tennessee sought to prosecute Whitworth for the crime, but Arkansas refused to extradite him. The Supreme Court held that Tennessee had the right to prosecute Whitworth for the crime, even though it was committed in another state. The Court reasoned that the crime was committed against the laws of Tennessee, and thus the state had the right to prosecute the offender. The Court also noted that the extradition clause of the Constitution did not apply in this case, as the crime was committed in another state. The Court concluded that Tennessee had the right to prosecute Whitworth for the crime, and that Arkansas was not obligated to extradite him.

In Tennessee v. Whitworth, the Supreme Court was asked to decide whether a state court had jurisdiction over a case involving an alleged breach of contract between two citizens of different states. The majority opinion held that the state court did not have jurisdiction because it violated Article III, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution which grants exclusive original jurisdiction in cases between citizens from different states to federal courts only. Justice Field dissented and argued that while he agreed with the majority's interpretation of Article III, Section 2, he believed that this particular case should be decided by a state court due to its local nature and lack of any substantial federal question or issue involved in it. He further noted that if Congress wanted all such cases exclusively heard by federal courts they would have provided for it explicitly in their legislation instead leaving matters like these up to judicial discretion as they had done here with no clear guidance on how such disputes were supposed to be handled when both parties resided outside the same state boundaries but within US borders