Law of Federal Courts
Authors:
Wright, Charles Alan / Kane, Mary Kay
Edition:
8th
Copyright Date:
2017
25 chapters
have results for Law of Federal Courts
Chapter 10. Procedure in the District Courts 1787 results (showing 5 best matches)
- In federal-question cases in which a federal court adopts or incorporates state law to fill interstices in federal statutory phrases, federal privilege law will be applied. In these cases in which a federal court chooses to absorb state law, it is applying the state law as a matter of federal common law. Thus, the rule of decision is not state law, even though the rule may be derived from state decisions.
- This is now well recognized if the federal judgment has decided some question of federal law. There are still many cases that say that when the federal court is exercising its diversity jurisdiction, the law of the state where it sits determines the preclusive effect of its judgment. This is wrong on two counts. If there is to be a distinction of this kind, it should have nothing to do with the jurisdictional basis of the suit, but with whether the particular issue is one on which state law or federal law provides the rule for decision. Those decisions are more fundamentally wrong because there ought not be such a distinction. As Judge Medina wrote in a well-known decision: “One of the strongest policies a court can have is that of determining the scope of its own judgments. * * * It would be destructive of the basic principles of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to say that the effect of a judgment of a federal court was governed by the law of the state where the court sits...
- The second of the special problems of preclusion that arise from having two systems of courts was what preclusion rules apply to a federal judgment in a second federal action. The third asked what rules apply to a federal judgment in a state-court action. They may usefully be considered together, since it turns out that there is a single answer to both questions, although the means of reaching that answer differ. Restatement Second of Judgments declares the answer as a matter of black-letter law: “Federal law determines the effects under the rules of res judicata of a judgment of a federal court.”
- Another issue that was considered by the American Law Institute when it took its guarded position in 1980 on possible exceptions to the usual rules of preclusion was whether an exception is justified because the federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction of the proceeding in which it is argued that a state-court judgment has some preclusive effect. In 1978, three members of the Supreme Court had joined in a dissent in which Justice Brennan, though calling it “an unresolved and difficult issue,” had said: “For myself, I confess to serious doubt that it is ever appropriate to accord res judicata effect to a state court determination of a claim over which the federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction; for surely state court determinations should not disable federal courts from ruling de novo on purely legal questions surrounding such federal claims.” Such case law as there was on the point has been divided and inconclusive. ...Court addressed, but did not resolve, this issue in 1985 in...
- To say this is not to suggest that federal courts are to ignore important state interests or that the preclusive effect of federal judgments is monolithic. It has become very common in other areas to hold that a particular subject matter is governed by federal law, but that a uniform national rule is not necessary and state law is to be looked to so long as it is not discriminatory or in conflict with federal statutes. This was elaborated upon Justice Scalia in Semtek, when he said: “Since state, rather than federal, substantive law is at issue there is no need for a uniform federal rule. And indeed, nationwide uniformity in the substance of the matter is better served by having the same claim-preclusive rule (the state rule) apply whether the dismissal has been ordered by a state or a federal court. This is, it seems to us, a classic case for adopting, as the federally prescribed rule of decision, the law that would be applied by state courts in the State in which the federal...
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Chapter 9. The Law Applied by the Federal Courts 317 results (showing 5 best matches)
- “Federal common law also may come into play when Congress has vested jurisdiction in the federal courts and empowered them to create governing rules of law.” In the best-known example of this the Court read a statute that on its face only grants jurisdiction to federal courts of suits for violation of contracts between an employer and a labor union as meaning that the substantive law to apply in these suits is federal law, which the courts through judicial inventiveness are to fashion from the policy of the national labor laws.
- The insistence on uniformity with the courts of the state where the district court is sitting would seem to introduce even a further refinement. In a situation such as Erie, where the accident was in Pennsylvania and suit in New York, Klaxon dictates that New York principles of choice-of-law control. If New York holds that in such a situation Pennsylvania law is to govern, it would seem that the federal court is then to apply, not Pennsylvania law as the federal court understands it, but the New York conception, if any, of what the Pennsylvania law is. Indeed the Supreme Court seems to have gone this far in a case in which it directed the federal court to decide the relative weights, as authoritative sources for ascertaining the law of the place of the wrong, the forum state would give to direct holdings of an intermediate court of the state of the wrong and a considered dictum of relevant scope of the supreme court of that state.
- Just how useful is illustrated by the Supreme Court’s 1996 decision in Gasperini v. Center for Humanities, Inc., which addressed the question whether the New York federal court was bound by a New York statute setting standards for judicial review of jury awards for excessiveness or inadequacy and providing for de novo review of those trial-court decisions. Recognizing that the New York statute was both substantive in the provision of standards for reviewing jury awards and procedural in assigning the ultimate decisionmaking authority to the appellate courts, Justice Ginsburg’s opinion for the majority exemplifies a careful analysis and balancing of the state and federal policies implicated for each issue with the objective of determining “whether federal courts can give effect to the substantive thrust of [the New York statute] without untoward alteration of the federal scheme for the trial and decision of civil cases.” ...” from what would be reasonable compensation; federal...
- If an issue is controlled by federal common law, this is binding on both state and federal courts. A case “arising under” federal common law is a federal-question case, and is within the original jurisdiction of the federal courts as such.
- Writing in 1928 of the progeny of Since the doctrine of Swift v. Tyson is now a museum piece, it would not be worthwhile to develop the distinctions that the courts created in applying the doctrine. The dichotomy between matters of “general” law, which the federal courts were free to find for themselves, and matters of “local” law, on which state decisions were binding, proved particularly elusive. Though Swift v. Tyson might have been limited to questions of commercial law, it was not so limited, and it was ultimately held that federal courts were to decide for themselves questions of the law of torts. Usually state law was respected on questions of real property, but even here the federal court was allowed to take its own view if the state decisions were thought to be unsettled. In general state-court decisions construing a state statute or constitution were followed in the federal courts, but it was held that those decisions need not be followed if they conflicted with an earlier
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Chapter 12. The Appellate Jurisdiction of the Supreme Court 248 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The other aspect of the rule of Murdock v. Memphis is that the Supreme Court cannot review a state decision at all if that decision rests on an adequate state ground. Thus, there can be no review if the state court has decided the case exclusively on some ground of state law, and never has reached a federal question present in the case. Nor can there be review when the state court has decided both the state and federal questions, if its decision of the federal question was unnecessary in the light of its disposition of the state question. But if the state court has decided the case entirely on the federal question presented, the Supreme Court can review, even though there was a state question in the case that could have been the basis for decision. In those circumstances, if the state court’s resolution of the federal question is erroneous, the Supreme Court will remand the case to the state court, which can then pass on the state question. ...a state statute incorporates federal...
- There has been an elaborate argument made that the Framers of the Constitution intended that the Supreme Court would speak authoritatively on questions of state law as well as on questions of federal law. The historical evidence for this proposition is unconvincing, and the uniform practice of the Court has been to the contrary. It has considered that the state courts speak with final authority on questions of state law. The exceptions to this principle are very few. Decisions of the state court about state law are only persuasive, rather than controlling, when state law is incorporated by reference in a federal statute, or when protection of a federal constitutional right would be thwarted if the state had the last word on state questions, as in determining whether there is a “contract” within the meaning of the clause of the Constitution prohibiting impairment of the obligation of contracts, or when the state-court interpretation of state law appears to be an “obvious subterfuge...
- When there is no clarification from the state court, four different techniques had been used by the Court in the past, with no principled explanation of why the Court chose one technique rather than the other. the Court announced a new approach. “[W]hen, as in this case, a state court decision fairly appears to rest primarily on federal law, or to be interwoven with the federal law, and when the adequacy and independence of any possible state law ground is not clear from the face of the opinion, we will accept as the most reasonable explanation that the state court decided the case the way it did because it believed that federal law required it to do so. If a state court chooses merely to rely on federal precedents as it would on the precedent of all other jurisdictions, then it need only make clear by a plain statement in its judgment or opinion that the federal cases are being used only for the purpose of guidance, and do not themselves compel the result that the court has reached.”
- The Supreme Court ordinarily does not sit to decide questions of fact. If the facts have been found by a jury, the Court is precluded from reexamination of them by the Seventh Amendment Even when there is no constitutional bar, the Court usually should not decide fact questions for its special competence is in questions of law. Accordingly the Court follows rules of self-limitation with regard to questions of fact. In civil cases coming from a court of appeals, the so-called “two court rule” applies, and the Court will not review findings of fact concurred in by two courts below in the absence of a very obvious and exceptional showing of error. On review of decisions of state courts, the stated rule is that “all those matters which are usually termed issues of fact are for conclusive determination by the State courts and are not open for reconsideration by this Court. Observance of this restriction in our review of State courts calls for the utmost scruple.”
- Under the statute there must be a federal question in order to invoke the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. Whether there is such a question in the case is a matter that the Supreme Court must decide for itself. The mere presence of a federal question will not permit review, however, unless that federal question is “substantial.” Even though a question of federal law has been raised, if it appears that the question is wholly formal, or is so absolutely devoid of merit as to be frivolous, or has been explicitly foreclosed by a decision or decisions of the Supreme Court so as to leave no room for real controversy, the Court will not hear the case. Prior to 1988 it was not uncommon for the Court, without hearing oral argument, to dismiss an appeal from a state court for want of a substantial federal question. Now it need only deny certiorari.
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Chapter 8. The Relations of State and Federal Courts 517 results (showing 5 best matches)
- In the Pullman case the Supreme Court ordered the trial court to retain jurisdiction while the parties sought a state ruling on the state issues. Since retention of jurisdiction is usually ordered in Pullman-type cases, the Court has defended abstention, saying “this principle does not, of course, involve the abdication of federal jurisdiction but only the postponement of its exercise * * * .” The implementation of this, however, has led to a complicated procedure. The Court first held that the federal constitutional objections must be presented to the state court, so that it may consider the issues of state law in the light of the constitutional claims. But if the state court should decide the federal issues, on ordinary principles of res judicata—or issue preclusion, as it is now called—this would be a binding determination, subject to review only in the Supreme Court, and there would be nothing left for the federal court to decide in the exercise of the jurisdiction it had...
- At the Constitutional Convention, and in the framing of the Judiciary Act of 1789, the states-rights interests were opposed to the creation of inferior federal courts, arguing that the state courts were sufficient to enforce federal law. This view, as has been seen, As early as 1815 the states began to shift their ground and to argue that they should not be required to entertain federal claims. For many years, though it was clear that the state courts could hear a federal claim, it was not clear whether they were required to do so. The question was finally resolved in the Second Employers’ Liability Cases, in which it was held that claims arising under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act could be enforced, as of right, in the courts of the states if their jurisdiction, as prescribed by local laws, was adequate to the occasion. The Connecticut court had held that enforcement of an FELA claim in state court was contrary to the policy of that state, but the Supreme Court found that...
- Usually the federal law that a state court is called upon to enforce is statutory, but this need not always be the case. There is an expanding area of “federal common law,” involving matters in which the federal interest is so strong that the federal courts are free to develop substantive rules to protect that interest. When an issue of this nature arises in a state action, the state court must enforce the federal doctrine rather than its own law.
- The first of these doctrines, and the most clearly established, comes in cases in which state action is being challenged in federal court as contrary to the federal Constitution, and there are questions of state law that may be dispositive of the case. This is usually referred to as the Pullman doctrine, from the case of Railroad Commission of Texas v. Pullman Company, which is probably the first and surely the leading case supporting abstention in these circumstances. In that case the company was seeking to enjoin enforcement of an order of the Texas Railroad Commission, claiming that the order denied its rights under the Fourteenth Amendmentlaw did not give the Commission authority to make the order in question. It is settled that a federal court has jurisdiction to decide the ancillary state issues in such a case, but the wisdom of exercising jurisdiction is doubtful. A unanimous Court, speaking through Justice Frankfurter, said: “In this situation a federal court of equity is...
- “An excuse that is inconsistent with or violates federal law is not a valid excuse * * * .” For this reason it is not a valid excuse that the statutes granting jurisdiction to the state court do not give it jurisdiction over a particular kind of action if the jurisdictional statutes discriminate against the claim in question because it is created by federal law. This was settled in McKnett v. St. Louis & San Francisco Railway Company. An Alabama statute gave its courts jurisdiction over causes of action arising outside of the state if they were based on “common law or the statutes of another state.” An FELA action was brought in Alabama for an injury that had occurred in Tennessee. The Alabama court refused to entertain the action, holding that the federal statute was neither part of the common law nor a statute of another state. A unanimous Supreme Court held that the Alabama statute, as so construed, was unconstitutional and that Alabama was required to entertain the action. Since...
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Chapter 1. The Federal Judicial System 193 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Section 34 of the act is well known as the Rules of Decision Act. It provided that, except as otherwise required by federal law, “the laws of the several states” should be regarded as rules of decision in trials at common law in the federal courts in cases where they applied. Probably no statute regarding the federal courts has led to such difficulty.
- American Law Institute, Study of the Division of Jurisdiction between State and Federal Courts, Official Draft, 1969 (cited hereafter as ALI Study). See
- Changes continue to be made by Congress in the laws regulating the federal judiciary. The Judicial Code was recodified in 1948, while 1958 produced important enactments increasing the jurisdictional amount to $10,000, redefining corporate citizenship, and allowing for discretionary interlocutory appeals from the district courts to the courts of appeals. The requirement of an amount in controversy for federal-question cases, always largely illusory, was greatly reduced in application in 1976 and abolished entirely in 1980. Another 1980 statute provided for the first time a means other than impeachment for investigating and resolving allegations that a federal judge has been unable to discharge efficiently all the duties of the office or has engaged in conduct inconsistent with the effective and expeditious administration of the courts. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit was created in 1982; it differs from the other courts of appeals in that it hears cases in specified kinds of
- The Judicial Conference of the United States is the primary policymaking body for the federal judiciary. It comprises the Chief Justice of the United States, the chief judges of each circuit and of the Court of International Trade, and a district judge from each circuit elected by the circuit and district judges of that circuit. It is to make a comprehensive survey of the condition of business in the courts of the United States, to prepare plans for assignments of judges to and from particular courts where necessary, to make suggestions and recommendations to the various courts to promote uniformity of management procedures and the expeditious conduct of court business, and to submit to Congress its recommendations for legislation. It has responsibility to carry on the rulemaking process for the federal courts generally and to recommend to the Supreme Court changes in and additions to the various sets of rules that apply nationwide. ...review all rules particular courts, other...
- The classic study of the history of the federal judiciary, somewhat misleadingly titled, is Frankfurter & Landis, The Business of the Supreme Court, 1928.
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Chapter 3. Federal Question 256 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The Merrell Dow case was a state-court suit against the manufacturer of Bendectin, alleging that use of that drug had caused birth defects. The complaint alleged a variety of claims under state law, but also alleged that the promotion of Bendectin violated the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA). On the basis of this allegation defendant removed the case to federal court, but the propriety of removal turned on whether the case could have been brought in federal court as a federal-question case. agreed, and the Supreme Court assumed, that there is no federal cause of action for FDCA violations. A bare majority of the Court held that there is no federal-question jurisdiction of a suit alleging a violation of a federal statute as an element of a state cause of action when Congress has determined that there should be no private federal cause of action. Plaintiffs had argued that their allegation about FDCA meant that the case presented a “substantial” question of federal law,...
- when he said that Congress could authorize a bank chartered by it to sue in federal court though only state issues were involved, and on the line of cases permitting a trustee in bankruptcy to pursue in federal court a private cause of action arising under and wholly governed by state law. It is true that in those cases there is, in the background at least, some federal right, other than the bare right to sue in federal court. The bank’s very existence was as a creature of federal law; in the bankruptcy cases the trustee is an officer of a federal court, and the ancillary suit is a part of the whole bankruptcy process, itself governed by federal law. Nevertheless attempts to distinguish Osborn and the bankruptcy cases do not seem entirely successful. ...this, it is difficult to believe that the Court, if clearly confronted with the question, would accept the commentators’ proposals for “protective jurisdiction” when to do so would have drastic consequences on the accepted... ...of...
- The application of the Skelly Oil principle to cases in which it is asserted that a state-law claim has been preempted by federal law occurs primarily when it is sought to remove such a case from state court to federal court and is discussed elsewhere. But a party may also go to federal court to enjoin state officers from enforcing a state statute or for a declaratory judgment that they cannot enforce the statute because it is preempted by federal law. There is federal-question jurisdiction of a suit of this kind. As the great case of Ex parte Young shows, the Supremacy Clause creates an implied right of action for injunctive relief against state officers who are threatening to violate the federal Constitution or laws, and this right of action is equally available though the party seeks only a declaratory judgment. This right of action can be asserted only when a state official is the defendant, so that there is no federal jurisdiction if a private party sues another private party,...
- The hardest situation had been thought to be when a party seeks a declaration that it is immune, by virtue of federal law, from a nonfederal claim that the other party may have. Suppose the controversy between the Louisville & Nashville Railroad and the Mottleys had arisen after passage of the Declaratory Judgment Act. Could the railroad sue in federal court for a declaratory judgment that the statute relieved it from its obligation to give Mr. and Mrs. Mottley a pass? On the narrow view it could not, for, absent the declaratory procedure, the federal claim would arise only as a defense to the passholders’ common-law action for breach of contract, and the only possible coercive action, that by the Mottleys for specific performance, would raise no federal question. The broader view would permit the declaratory action since in that suit the railroad’s federal claim of an immunity to the common-law action would appear on the face of the railroad’s complaint. Though this would mean that...
- Because of this rule, it does not suffice for jurisdiction that the answer raises a federal question. If the basis for original federal-question jurisdiction is that the federal courts have a special expertness in applying federal law, and that assertions of federal law will be received more hospitably in a federal court, it would seem that the courts should have jurisdiction whenever there is some federal issue regardless of which pleading raises it. The rule to the contrary probably stems from the conceptual notion that unless the initial pleading is sufficient to invoke the jurisdiction of the court, the court lacks power to require responsive pleadings or take any other act in the case. The rule is an inconvenient one, especially when, as seen in the previous section, the existence of a federal question is said to depend on a genuine and present controversy. How a controversy can be found in plaintiff’s pleading alone “still remains a mystery of the judicial process.”
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Chapter 6. Removal Jurisdiction and Procedure 203 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The rule that plaintiff is master of the claim works well enough if it is clear that remedies are available under both state and federal law for a particular course of conduct. If plaintiff chooses to pursue only the state remedy, that is plaintiff’s privilege and the case will not be removable as a federal-question case. Often, however, it is contended that the state remedies have been preempted by federal law. The difficulty here is that “preemption” is used in the law in more than one sense. In many instances preexisting state rights of action are cut off by federal law. In these situations preemption is a defense to the state claim, and the rule that jurisdiction must be based on the complaint rather than on defenses There are other situations, however, of which § 301 of the Taft-Hartley Act is the most conspicuous, in which it is held that federal law has taken over an entire subject matter and made it inherently federal. ...in state court to enforce rights arising under...
- The preemption cases are difficult enough, but a few cases, including notably the Supreme Court’s decision in Moitie, seem to carry the “artful pleading” concept even farther. In Moitie the plaintiffs had earlier brought federal antitrust actions, which had been dismissed. They then brought actions in state court in which the allegations were quite similar to those in the earlier case but purported to raise only state-law claims. It was in this context that the Court said that plaintiffs “had attempted to avoid removal jurisdiction by ‘artfully’ casting their ‘essentially federal law claims’ as state-law claims.” It never has been held that the federal antitrust laws preempt state law. One explanation of Moitie that the lower courts developed was that removal jurisdiction was permissible in this context because it effectuated federal preclusion. ...premised on a defense, ignoring the well-pleaded complaint rule, as well as the notion that plaintiff was the master of the claim....
- Recognizing the problems posed by the 1990 version of , Congress amended the statute in 2011 in an effort to preserve a defendant’s right to remove claims arising under federal law, but avoid the constitutional questions raised by the then-existing language. While the newest version of the statute continues to authorize removal of an entire case whenever a separate and independent federal-question claim is joined with one or more claims not within the original or supplemental jurisdiction of the court or that have been made non-removable by statute, the section now requires the court to sever and remand all unrelated state-law claims. In this way, the federal courts’ jurisdiction is kept within its constitutional limits, but plaintiff’s addition of unrelated non-removable claims will not prevent the defendant from having the federal claims determined in a federal court.
- In general, actions that might originally have been brought in federal court may be removed thereto, though as will be subsequently seen, there are some respects in which the removal jurisdiction is broader, and some in which it is narrower, than the original jurisdiction of the federal courts. Though original jurisdiction and removal jurisdiction are thus linked, removal jurisdiction is invoked much less frequently than is original jurisdiction. Since removability is equated with original jurisdiction, the principles already developed as to the existence of a federal question or diversity, and as to jurisdictional amount, are equally relevant here, and need not be restated. There is a surface symmetry in setting out the same tests for removal and for original jurisdiction, but this leads to strange results in federal-question cases. Defendant can remove a case when plaintiff relies on federal law for its claim, though plaintiff is perfectly willing to entrust the federal claim to a...
- holds that a federal district court has discretion to remand a properly removed case to state court when all the federal-law claims in the action have been eliminated and only pendent state-law claims remain. It has always been true that when a case is in federal court, either originally or by removal, the court has discretion whether to hear or to dismiss any state claims that are pendent to the federal claim that is the basis for jurisdiction. Ordinarily it is to exercise that discretion by dismissing the pendent claims if the federal claim has been dismissed before trial. Carnegie-Mellon case goes beyond the prior law by recognizing in a removed case a discretion to remand the pendent state claims to state court rather than increase the expense and time involved by dismissing and requiring plaintiff to start over in state court.
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Chapter 7. Venue 178 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Both in Van Dusen and in Ferens the Court spoke quite explicitly of diversity cases. This suggests that in a federal-question case the transferee court is free to think for itself what federal law is and need not mechanically apply the view of federal law that is taken in the circuit from which the case was transferred.
- It is wholly settled by a long and unbroken line of authority that venue is controlled entirely by Acts of Congress and that the construction of these is a federal question. Although some district courts, construing the 1966 amendment making the district in which the claim arose a proper venue, said that where a claim arises is to be determined by state law, the Supreme Court has rejected that heresy and made it clear that this, like other questions of federal venue, is to be decided wholly by federal standards.
- The most interesting, and most controversial, change-of-venue provision adopted for civil cases is . It generally authorizes a district court to transfer any civil action to any other district or division where it might have been brought “for the convenience of parties and witnesses” and “in the interest of justice.” One year earlier the Supreme Court had held that the doctrine of forum non conveniens was available in federal court, and that a court could dismiss a suit, though it had both personal and subject-matter jurisdiction and the venue was properly laid, if there existed another forum so much more convenient for the parties and the courts that plaintiff’s privilege of choosing the forum was outweighed. Although the doctrine of forum non it has largely been superseded in federal courts by the 1948 adoption of Only in rare instances in which the alternative forum is a state court or the court of a foreign country may the federal court now dismiss on grounds of forum non...court
- Although the concept of venue—that there is a particular court or courts in which an action should be brought—is of ancient common-law lineage, it was not until 1887 that the federal courts had any significant venue requirements for civil actions. Until that time the relevant statute, with origins going back to the First Judiciary Act, permitted suit in any district where the defendant “is an inhabitant, or in which he shall be found * * * .” The latter clause meant that venue was proper in ordinary cases wherever service could be made on the defendant. The choice of place to sue was in fact not as broad for much of this period as this statute might indicate, since as has been seen, from 1789 to 1875 the federal courts were given diversity jurisdiction only when one of the parties was a citizen of the state in which suit was brought. In 1887, as part of a general narrowing of access to federal court, the provision that suit might be brought in the district in which the defendant was...
- The law of corporate venue has been seen not to be simple, even since the adoption of a statute on the subject. The law of venue for unincorporated associations—partnerships, labor unions, and the like—has been even more complex. It first must be determined whether the association has capacity to sue or be sued as such. The question of capacity is resolved in accordance with the law of the state in which the suit is brought, except that capacity exists, regardless of state law, when the suit involves a claimed right under the federal constitution or laws. Even if the association has capacity to appear in court in its own name, it still might be held that the residences of the individual members of the association are determinative for venue purposes. This view, once quite commonly accepted, was rejected in several notable cases, and unincorporated associations were assimilated to corporations for purposes of venue. The latter view was finally adopted by the Supreme Court in 1967
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Chapter 2. The Judicial Power of the United States 406 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The law of standing, the Supreme Court says, is a “complicated specialty of federal jurisdiction, the solution of whose problems is in any event more or less determined by the specific circumstances of individual situations * * * .” The description of this problem as a “specialty of federal jurisdiction” has caused difficulty. State courts must and do have a body of law determining who has standing to litigate particular matters. One leading writer has taken the view that standing is a specialty of federal jurisdiction only in the sense that the federal law of standing involves artificialities that the states wisely have refused to follow. The phrase can, however, be understood in a different sense. Since standing to sue is an element of the federal constitutional concept of “case perhaps the Supreme Court meant to say only that on those questions the federal courts must reach their own decisions without regard to what the state law in point may be.
- 13 Wright, Miller, Cooper & Freer, Jurisdiction 3d §§ 3525, 3526; Redish, Federal Jurisdiction: Tensions in the Allocation of Judicial Power, 1980, pp. 7–34;
- This principle, that the jurisdiction of the federal courts cannot extend beyond that given by the Constitution, would seem to be fundamental. It has, however, been subject to some inroads. Thus, the Constitution does not in terms permit the removal of cases from state court to federal court. Yet the First Judiciary Act, and all since, have authorized removal in particular circumstances, and where the case is one within the judicial power of the United States, the provision for removal has been held to be an appropriate exercise of the congressional power to make laws “necessary and proper” for carrying out the tasks delegated to the national government. There are some matters that cannot be independently asserted in a federal court, because they do not come within the judicial power of the United States, but that may, as a matter of procedural convenience, be raised as “ancillary” or “supplemental” to a matter that is properly being heard by the federal court. ...on the federal...
- . The Court presumes that there is state-court jurisdiction over claims arising under federal law, and this presumption can be rebutted only by “an explicit statutory directive, by unmistakable implication from legislative history, or by a clear incompatibility between state-court jurisdiction and federal interests.” See Redish & Muench, Adjudication of Federal Causes of Action in State Court, 1976, 75 Mich.L.Rev. 311;
- When the authors of the Constitution restricted the federal courts to the determination of cases and controversies, presumably they had in mind that the business of the courts should be the kind of judicial business with which they were familiar in the English courts. Indeed Justice Frankfurter has observed that “a court will not decide a question unless the nature of the action challenged, the kind of injury inflicted, and the relationship between the parties are such that judicial determination is consonant with what was, generally speaking, the business of the Colonial courts and the courts of Westminster when the Constitution was framed.” Yet the oldest and most consistent thread in the federal law of justiciability is that the federal courts will not give advisory opinions, though at least by 1770 the power of the English judges to give advisory opinions was well recognized. ...decisions to concrete cases in which a question is precisely framed by a clash of genuine adversary...
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Chapter 4. Diversity of Citizenship 295 results (showing 5 best matches)
- When there is a legitimate choice between a state and a federal forum for a particular action, the lawyer who has the choice quite properly will weigh the possible tactical advantages and disadvantages of going to one court or the other. Since 1938 there is, at least in theory, no longer any difference in the substantive law applied in the two sets of courts in diversity cases. The reputation the federal courts once had, whether or not deserved, of being unduly hospitable to corporations and to personal-injury defendants is now dissipated. But in choosing between a particular state court and a particular federal court for a particular case, there are still differences that to the lawyer seem significant. In Louisiana tort claimants prefer federal court, because appellate review of jury verdicts is much more restrictive there than in the state courts. In other areas, where the delay in reaching trial is much greater in federal court than in state court, it is the defendants in tort...
- The arguments against diversity are not in themselves of great force. They rest primarily on the congestion that diversity cases are thought to cause for the federal courts, and on the inappropriateness of asking federal judges to decide these cases when, under the rule of Erie Railroad Company v. Tompkins, they are obliged to apply state law and thus are plunged into difficult questions on which only the state courts can speak authoritatively. It is thought, too, that judicial and legislative authority should be coextensive, and that for federal courts to decide cases arising under state law is an undesirable interference with state autonomy.of diversity jurisdiction diminishes the incentives and energies for reforming state courts of those influential groups who, by virtue of diversity, are able to avoid the state courts. Though each of these arguments has force, they would not, singly or together, make a case for the abolition of diversity jurisdiction if that jurisdiction in...
- The First Congress, in the Judiciary Act of 1789, sought to outlaw one obvious device for manufacturing federal jurisdiction where it would not otherwise exist. A citizen of New Jersey has a claim, for the requisite amount, against another citizen of New Jersey. Seemingly suit must be in state court. But if, for some reason, federal court is preferred, he may well think of assigning his claim to a citizen of Pennsylvania, who will then sue on the basis of diversity and pay over the proceeds of the suit to his New Jersey friend. To prevent such a result, it was provided in Section 11 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 that the federal court was to have no jurisdiction of a suit on a promissory note, or other chose of action, in favor of an assignee, unless the suit could have been prosecuted in federal court if no assignment had been made. With changes in language, this “assignee clause,” as it was known, was a part of the law until 1948. The statute, even with—or perhaps because of—...
- The exception with regard to domestic-relations cases dates back to a dictum in an 1858 case. There the Court held that a wife could sue, on the basis of diversity, in a federal court in Wisconsin to enforce the decree of a New York state court that granted her a divorce and alimony, but it added: “We disclaim altogether any jurisdiction in the courts of the United States upon the subject of divorce, or for the allowance of alimony, either as an original proceeding in chancery or as an incident to divorce In a later case the Supreme Court announced that federal courts cannot hear child-custody cases, making the sweeping statement that “the whole subject of the domestic relations of husband and wife, parent and child, belongs to the laws of the States and not to the laws of the United States.”
- is that the federal courts are so much better than the state courts that it is desirable to channel as many cases as possible to federal court, or at least that those from out-of-state, who have no opportunity to work for the improvement of the state courts, should be spared from exposure to them. There are reasons why this might be true. Federal judges enjoy life tenure, they are free to comment on the evidence, and they sit with juries selected from a broader geographical area. Not all lawyers would agree, however, that these differences lead to better justice, and though the prestige of the federal courts generally has been high, there have been long periods when these very procedural differences have led to suspicion of the federal courts as rich people’s courts or defendants’ courts. Further, arguments stemming from a supposed inferiority of state justice are insusceptible of proof and hardly politic to advance. There is, however, a somewhat related argument that the existence of
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Chapter 13. The Original Jurisdiction of the Supreme Court 56 results (showing 5 best matches)
- In deciding suits between states—and apparently in all other cases to which a state is a party, though the matter is not clearly settled—the Court applies “federal common law.” The source of that law, and its precise content, never have been clearly specified. Sitting, as it were, as an international, as well as a domestic tribunal, the Court draws on federal law, state law, and international law, as the exigencies of the particular case may demand. While the municipal law relating to like questions between individuals is taken into account, it is not deemed to have controlling effect. cases involving the validity or construction of interstate compacts, the Court is free to decide questions of local law for itself if need be.
- In a very early case it was held that the Supreme Court had original jurisdiction of a suit against a state by a citizen of another state. As the Amendment has been construed, it prohibits suit against a state by a citizen of another state, a citizen of the state itself, or an alien, It is a different matter when the state is plaintiff. The Supreme Court has original but not exclusive jurisdiction of all actions by a state against the citizens of another state or against aliens. There is no jurisdiction if a citizen of another state is joined as defendant with a citizen of the plaintiff state, presumably because the case is no longer “between a State and Citizens of another State” as the Constitution requires. As already has been pointed out, it is held, with doubtful logic and no discussion, that the same result applies when the case arises under the federal law and there is thus another basis of jurisdiction. Since the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court is not exclusive if a state...
- Actions within the original jurisdiction are almost always equitable in nature. A statute purports to give a right to trial by jury in original actions in the Supreme Court against citizens of the United States, The Supreme Court has held that the Seventh Amendment and the statute, if they extend to original jurisdiction cases at all, are applicable only to actions at law. Normally cases within the original jurisdiction that cannot be resolved as a matter of law are referred to a master. Pleadings and motions in original actions are governed by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and those rules are “a guide” on other procedural questions that may arise, Commonly these cases are protracted and expensive, but it is likely that the importance, and the technical nature, of the issues that typically arise in original cases to which a state is a party are such that no system of procedure could prevent delay and expense.
- The provision for original jurisdiction does not extend the judicial power of the United States as defined in the preceding language of Article III, § 2 Thus, the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court does not reach to all cases to which a state is party, but only to cases within the judicial power to which a state is party. A suit by the United States against a state is within the judicial power, since it is a “Controversy to which the United States shall be a party,” and it is within the original jurisdiction, since it is one “in which a state shall be Party.” On this analysis it was held that such a suit can be brought in the Supreme Court. A suit by a state against one of its own citizens is not ordinarily within the judicial power at all, and thus cannot be brought in the Supreme Court even though the state is a party. It would seem that a suit by a state against one of its citizens that arises under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States would be within...
- It is the last class of cases, in which the Court has declined jurisdiction of suits between two states, that has caused controversy, because the statute says that the Supreme Court has “original and exclusive jurisdiction” of all such cases. suggests that the Court may have had second thoughts about its refusal to accept jurisdiction of cases in which its jurisdiction is exclusive. In 1988, by a 5–3 vote, the Court denied leave for Louisiana to file a bill of complaint in a boundary dispute with Mississippi. The dissenting Justices speculated that leave had been denied because Louisiana had intervened in private litigation in a federal district court. In that private litigation Louisiana filed a third-party complaint against Mississippi and in 1992 the Supreme Court granted certiorari to review a Fifth Circuit decision that the island in question was in Louisiana. It held that “exclusive” in the statute means what it says and that the district court lacked jurisdiction of Louisiana’...
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Preface to the First Edition 4 results
- The organization of the book is generally similar to that of the casebooks on this subject by Forrester and Currier, and by McCormick, Chadbourn, and Wright, though the subject of procedure in the federal courts is given more attention here than in those casebooks, and is intended to be useful by students taking courses which emphasize federal procedure,or procedure in a state with rules modelled on the Federal Rules. Necessarily the discussion here is primarily about civil cases, though I have endeavored to suggest a few of the problems which arise in criminal cases,and to indicate that not all of the business of the federal courts is civil. Like everyone who has worked in this field in the last decade, I have been influenced by the great work of scholarship produced by Professors Hartand Wechsler. Their insistence that the problems of federal jurisdiction be considered in terms of their effect on our system of federalism, rather than as purely technical exercises, is especially...
- This book is intended to provide for law students a comprehensive textual discussion of the jurisdiction and procedure of the federal courts. I have been greatly aided in preparing the book by my recent reexamination of these subjects in the course of doing my revision of the Barron & Holtzoff Treatise. The availability of the Treatise has been helpful, too,since it has made it possible to confine case citations to the more important precedents, while referring the reader interested in exhaustive citation to the Treatise. This book, however, is not a mere abridgement of the Treatise. The needs, as I conceive them, of the law student are so far different from those of the lawyer and the judge, for whom the Treatise was written, that it has been necessary to write for the student an entirely new book. The Treatise endeavors to state accurately and completely what the law is. This book, written for a student audience, is more concerned with why the law is as it is, and whether existing...
- My debts are many. I have acquired many valuable insights into the working of the federal courts from my brilliant and experienced colleagues on the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules. Dean W. Page Keeton has been a source of great encouragement, and has provided facilities and teaching arrangements conducive to scholarship. Three of my former students, Bert B. Adkins, Jr., Buford P. Berry, and Thomas S. Terrell, have kindly read the manuscript, and pointed out many places where revision was necessary if the book was to meet the needs and the understanding of law students.
- But to two men I owe an overwhelming debt. Each has been my friend and my collaborator. Each, through his scholarly work and his effort for reform, has done much to shape the federal court system as we know it. From each I have learned much. As an inadequate token of my gratitude to, and admiration for, these great men, this book is respectfully dedicated to Charles E. Clark and Charles T. McCormick, with the hope that they will not find it unworthy.
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Chapter 5. Jurisdictional Amount 187 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Instead the amount in controversy is measured as of the time the action comes to the federal court. Subsequent events, even including a reduction in the amount sought by the plaintiff, cannot destroy jurisdiction that has once been acquired. and if this is put in issue, as by a motion to dismiss for want of jurisdiction, the burden is on plaintiff to satisfy the court that the requisite amount is in controversy. Determination of the value of the matter in controversy is a federal question to be decided under federal standards, although the federal court must look to state law to determine the nature and extent of the right to be enforced in a diversity case.
- A few lower-court cases have suggested a different rule. These cases view the amount in controversy from the point of view of the party seeking to invoke federal jurisdiction, and thus look to plaintiff’s viewpoint in a case within the original jurisdiction, and to defendant’s viewpoint in a case brought to federal court by removal from state court. There is an attraction to this rule, in that it would use the viewpoint of the party who has the burden of proof on jurisdiction. Nevertheless it would create the anomaly that a case brought in the original jurisdiction of the federal court could be dismissed for want of the requisite amount, but then removed to federal court by defendant if it were refiled in state court.
- The suggestion of Feinberg, Establishing Jurisdictional Amount by a Counterclaim, 1956, 21 Mo.L.Rev. 243, that the test should be whether the counterclaim is compulsory under the federal rules is unacceptable. It is state law, not the federal rules, that determines whether a speedy plaintiff can compel defendant to litigate in state court a claim for which he otherwise would have a federal forum. This is the evil to which the removal statutes are addressed.
- Against this background, the surprising decision of the Supreme Court in 1961 in Horton v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Company can be examined. Horton asserted a claim before the Texas Industrial Accident Board for worker’s compensation of $14,035. The Board awarded him $1050. On the day the award was made, the insurer filed suit in federal court to set aside the award to Horton. The complaint alleged diversity, and asserted also that Horton had claimed, was claiming, and would claim $14,035, but that in fact he was not entitled to recover anything at all under Texas law. One week later Horton sued in state court to set aside the Board’s award and to recover $14,035. Later he moved to dismiss the insurer’s federal-court action on the ground that the value of the “matter in controversy” was only $1050, and also filed, subject to his motion to ...$14,035. On these facts it was held, five to four, that the amount in controversy exceeded the $10,000 then required, and that federal...
- The practical consequence of denying removal in these circumstances is that a party who wins the race to the courthouse by asserting a small claim in state court can compel its opponent to litigate his own claim in that court, even though the opponent’s claim is for far more than the amount required for federal jurisdiction. In one such case plaintiff sued in state court for $1,408.72. Defendant’s counterclaim, compulsory by state law, If this is compelled by statute, then it must be followed, regardless of its desirability, but the courts so holding point to no specific statutory language that requires this result. The removal statutes themselves are silent about amount in controversy. The general diversity statute says only that the courts have jurisdiction “where the matter in controversy exceeds the sum or value of $75,000, exclusive of interest and costs.” It would be perfectly consistent with the statute to hold that a claim that arises from the transaction sued on and that,...
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Chapter 11. The Appellate Jurisdiction of the Courts of Appeals 173 results (showing 5 best matches)
- decided before law and equity were merged by adoption of the federal rules, and, more surprisingly, in Ettelson v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, decided after adoption of the rules, the Supreme Court held that if an action is brought that is triable to a jury, and defendant asserts a defense or a counterclaim not triable to a jury, the decision of the trial court to try the nonjury issues before the jury issues is appealable. The theory was that the order had the effect of an injunction staying prosecution of the legal action, a theory that bore little resemblance to reality in 1935 and none in 1942, when the merger of law and equity had been completed. A converse situation arose a few years later in City of Morgantown v. Royal Insurance Company. There it was the plaintiff who sued for reformation of an insurance policy, a claim not triable to a jury, and the defendant who counterclaimed to recover on the policy, a claim on which there is a right of jury trial. The court...
- Two principal statutory patterns for judicial review of orders of federal administrative agencies have been commonly employed in the past, in addition to the “nonstatutory” review available by suit in the district court against the officer or agency involved. The first pattern, originally adopted for the Interstate Commerce Commission in the Hepburn Act of 1906 and reenacted as the Urgent Deficiencies Act of 1913, permitted suit to enjoin a commission order before a three-judge district court, with that suit given precedence over all other cases, and appeal as of right to the Supreme Court. The other pattern is that of the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914. It gave exclusive jurisdiction to affirm, enforce, modify, or set aside orders of that commission to the then-circuit courts of appeals, with discretionary review in the Supreme Court by certiorari.
- In subsequent years each pattern of review was chosen by Congress for particular agencies. Review of some or all orders of the Federal Communications Commission, the Maritime Commission, the Packers and Stockyards Administration, and the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Administration was by a three-judge district court, under the procedure of the Urgent Deficiencies Act. Review by a court of appeals, under the pattern of the Federal Trade Commission Act, was written into most other regulatory statutes. Often it was difficult to fathom why Congress chose one form of review rather than another. Thus, in the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921 it was provided that orders of the Secretary of Agriculture under the “Packers” part of the act were to be reviewed in the court of appeals, while those under the “Stockyards” part of the act were to be reviewed by a three-judge district court.
- A bare majority of the Supreme Court found these principles inapplicable, however, in a 1957 case, and held that a writ of mandamus was properly issued by a court of appeals to overrule the determination of a district judge that “exceptional conditions” existed, within the meaning of Rule 53(b) , justifying appointment of a master. Though the Court cautioned that by its holding it did not intend “to authorize the indiscriminate use of prerogative writs as a means of reviewing interlocutory orders,” its conclusion that “supervisory control of the District Courts by the Courts of Appeals is necessary to proper judicial administration in the federal system”
- 16A Wright, Miller, Cooper & Struve, Jurisdiction 4th §§ 3945–3994. See also Tigar, Federal Appeals: Jurisdiction and Practice, 3d ed. 1999, cc. 6–11; Knibb, Federal Courts of Appeals Manual, 5th ed. 2007, cc. 20–35.
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Preface to the Eighth Edition 5 results
- Congress made some major changes in the jurisdiction and venue statutes with the enactment of the Federal Courts Jurisdiction and Venue Clarification Act of 2011. Among the more significant changes were those eliminating the resident alien provision and clarifying the treatment of corporations incorporated abroad or with their principal place of business there in the diversity statute. The removal statute was amended to require severance and remand for unrelated state-law claims in federal-question cases, as well as changing the standards and procedures for removal in important ways. Finally, the legislature effectively rewrote the general venue statute to resolve several open questions that had been plaguing the courts.
- Finally, this book makes frequent reference to the multi-volume Treatise on Federal Practice and Procedure, for which Professor Wright was the senior author, joined by Professors Arthur R. Miller, Edward H. Cooper, Kenneth W. Graham, Victor J. Gold, Richard L. Marcus, and myself. Charlie Wright had passed away only a short time before the Sixth Edition of this volume was written. Since then we have added more than eight new authors to take over various portions of the Treatise and they have been busily writing new updated editions of their respective volumes. All references to the Treatise have been checked and updated to reflect the many changes that have occurred in this ongoing revision process. Thus, those who wish more detail on matters discussed here will find it by going to the cited portions of the Treatise. As before, the citations omit its full title, and show only the volume number, the particular authors of the volume in question, the unit of the Treatise in which the...Law
- Since the publication of the Seventh Edition of this hornbook in 2011, the courts and Congress have been quite active. Thus, numerous significant developments have occurred in the field of federal court jurisdiction and procedure. Changes to the rules have been less significant, although the Federal Evidence Rules were completely restyled in 2011. As before, the aim of this new edition is to capture all of these developments, as well as many smaller ones, while preserving the rich discussion of history and policy choices that were a hallmark of the insights offered in earlier editions by my esteemed co-author Charles Alan Wright. His imprint on those editions remains a core contribution in this newest edition. Reference in this Preface to a few of the major changes that have occurred will indicate the areas where there has been substantial activity.
- Turning first to the Supreme Court, the Court issued several important standing decisions refining that standard, as well as a decision further delineating the scope of the bankruptcy courts’ jurisdiction. It also issued two important personal jurisdiction decisions involving the treatment of parent and subsidiary corporations and advancing a new “at home” standard, limiting the scope of general jurisdiction over corporations and businesses. The Court also rendered important opinions announcing special rules to govern the transfer of cases involving forum selection clauses, as well as the standard to be applied to determine the appealability of the dismissal of some of the claims in cases consolidated for pretrial purposes under the multidistrict transfer statute. Additional decisions on class action procedure were rendered, further restricting the use of class arbitration, preventing class plaintiffs from avoiding removal jurisdiction by seeking less than the required amount in...
- All of these highlighted changes, as well as others not delineated here, are incorporated in this Eighth Edition. Further, as is true of past editions, even on aspects that have not changed significantly since 2011, later cases have been noted and later scholarly commentary cited.
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Index 510 results (showing 5 best matches)
Summary of Contents 14 results (showing 5 best matches)
Table of Contents 71 results (showing 5 best matches)
Title Page 4 results
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West Academic Publishing’s Law School Advisory Board 10 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Professor of Law Emeritus, University of San Diego Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Michigan
- Professor of Law, Chancellor and Dean Emeritus, University of California, Hastings College of the Law
- Professor of Law, Pepperdine University Professor of Law Emeritus, University of California, Los Angeles
- Earle K. Shawe Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
- Distinguished University Professor, Frank R. Strong Chair in LawMichael E. Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University
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Table of Cases 605 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 122
- Charter Federal Savs. Bank v. Office of Thrift Supervision, 647
- Federal Land Bank of St. Louis v. Cupples Bros., 635
- John R. Alley & Co. v. Federal Nat. Bank of Shawnee, Shawnee County, Oklahoma, 516
- Karahalios v. National Federation of Federal Employees, 378
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Table of Statutes 63 results (showing 5 best matches)
Copyright Page 3 results
- The publisher is not engaged in rendering legal or other professional advice, and this publication is not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. If you require legal or other expert advice, you should seek the services of a competent attorney or other professional.
- West, West Academic Publishing, and West Academic are trademarks of West Publishing Corporation, used under license.
- Printed in the United States of America
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- Publication Date: November 23rd, 2016
- ISBN: 9780314290373
- Subject: Federal Courts
- Series: Hornbooks
- Type: Hornbook Treatises
- Description: This title offers practical guidance and comprehensive coverage on all aspects of federal court jurisdiction and litigation procedure, as well as the relationship between the state and federal courts. Text reviews the federal judicial system; judicial power of the United States; diversity of citizenship; venue; law applied in federal courts; pleadings, trials, and judgments; and appellate court and Supreme Court jurisdiction.