Watson v. Jones was a United States Supreme Court case that dealt with the issue of church property. The case involved a dispute between two factions of a Presbyterian church in Louisville, Kentucky. The dispute was over the ownership of the church property and the right to control the church's affairs. The majority faction argued that they had the right to control the church's affairs, while the minority faction argued that the property belonged to the entire congregation. The Supreme Court ultimately sided with the majority faction, ruling that the property belonged to the majority faction and that they had the right to control the church's affairs. The Court held that the majority faction had the right to control the church's affairs because they had the majority of the members and had been in control of the church for a long period of time. The Court also held that the minority faction had no right to the property because they had not been in control of the church for a long period of time. The Court's decision in Watson v. Jones established the principle that a majority faction of a church has the right to control the church's affairs and the property associated with it. This principle has been applied in numerous cases since then, and is still used today to determine the ownership of church property.

In Watson v. Jones, the Supreme Court was asked to decide whether a judgment of a court in Kentucky should be enforced by another court in Missouri. The majority opinion held that it should not because the two courts had no jurisdiction over each other and thus could not enforce one another's judgments. Justice Field dissented from this decision, arguing that when two states have adopted similar laws regarding enforcement of judgments between them, those laws must be respected and followed regardless of which state issued the original judgment. He argued further that since both Kentucky and Missouri had such laws on their books at the time, they were obligated to respect each other's judgments even if there was no direct jurisdictional connection between them. In his view, failure to do so would undermine public confidence in judicial proceedings across state lines as well as lead to unnecessary litigation costs for parties involved with inter-state disputes.