Elmendorf v. Taylor (1825) 23 U.S. 152, was a suit in equity to obtain a conveyance of lands held by the defendants, it was contended that certain other persons should be made parties to the suit. In this connection, Mr. Chief Justice Marshall in delivering the opinion of the court said, (at page 166): "This objection does not affect the jurisdiction, but addresses itself to the policy of the court. Courts of equity require that all the parties concerned in interest shall be brought before them, that the matter in controversy may be finally settled. This equitable rule, however, is framed by the court itself, and is subject to its discretion. It is not, like the description of parties, an inflexible rule, a failure to observe which turns the party out of court, because it has no jurisdiction over his cause; but, being introduced by the court itself, for the purposes of justice, is susceptible of modification for the promotion of those purposes." In that case, the chief justice, in giving the opinion of the court, says, "from the earliest ages courts of equity have refused their aid to those who have neglected, for an unreasonable length of time, to assert their claims; especially where the legal estate has been transferred to purchasers without notice." That "although the statutes of limitations do not, either in England or in these states, extend to suits in chancery, yet the courts in both countries have acknowledged their obligations." In referring to the case of Cholmondely v. Clinton, he says, "it was considered and treated by the court as a case of the highest importance; and the opinion was unequivocally expressed, that, both on principle and authority, the laches and non-claim of the rightful owner of an equitable estate for a period of twenty years supposing it the case of one who must within that period have made his claim in a court of law, had it been a legal estate, under no disability, and where there has been no fraud, will constitute a bar to equitable relief, by analogy to the statute of limitations, if, during all that period, the possession has been held under a claim unequivocally adverse." This case was appealed to the house of lords, where the lord chancellor considered that twenty years constituted a bar; the possession being adverse. And Lord Redesdale declared that "they had always considered the provision in the statute of James," which is similar to the Kentucky statute under consideration, and "which applied to rights and titles of entry, in which the period of limitation was twenty years, as that by which they were bound; and it was that upon which they had constantly acted." The Court also said: "That the rule which requires that all persons concerned in interest, however remotely, should be made parties to the suit, though applicable to most cases in the Courts of the United States, is not applicable to all. In the exercise of its discretion, the Court will require the plaintiff to do all in his power to bring every person concerned in interest before the Court. But if the case may be completely decided, as between the litigant parties, the circumstance that an interest exists in some other person, whom the process of the Court cannot reach, as if such party be the resident of some other State, ought not to prevent a decree upon its merits." Chief Justice Marshall said: "This court has uniformly professed its disposition, in cases depending on the laws of a particular state, to adopt the construction which the courts of the state have given to those laws. This course is founded on the principle, supposed to be universally recognized, that the judicial department of every government, where such department exists, is the appropriate organ for construing the legislative acts of that government. Thus no court in the universe, which professed to be governed by principle, would, we presume, undertake to say, that the courts of Great Britain, or of France, or of any other nation, had misunderstood their own statutes, and therefore erect itself into a tribunal which should correct such misunderstanding. We receive the construction given by the courts of the nation as the true sense of the law, and feel ourselves no more at liberty to depart from that construction, than to depart from the words of the statute. On this principle, the construction given by this court to the Constitution and laws of the United States is received by all as the true construction; and on the same principle the construction given by the courts of the several states to the legislative acts of those states is received as true, unless they come in conflict with the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States."