Principles of Federal Jurisdiction
Author:
Pfander, James E.
Edition:
3rd
Copyright Date:
2017
17 chapters
have results for courts
Chapter 4. The Supreme Court’s Appellate Jurisdiction 67 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The Constitution provides for “one supreme Court” to hear a largely appellate docket. While there was a good deal of debate at the constitutional convention about the need for lower federal courts and about the possibility that state courts might hear federal matters in the first instance, few doubted the need for a single supreme appellate court. Two considerations shaped this consensus. First, although the state courts were competent to hear some federal matters, the various state courts might disagree as to the meaning of federal law. A single federal court of appellate jurisdiction would unify these conflicting interpretations. Second, any particular state court might favor state interests and fail to give proper weight to federal law. Appellate review would prevent state court hostility from undermining the enforcement of federal law. Like the federal judicial department generally, then, the Court’s appellate jurisdiction was designed to address state court partiality and to...
- Although the Court can review decisions from both systems, the Court has agreed to review many more federal court than state court cases in recent years. During the October Term 2014, the Court issued some 66 signed opinions (decisions reached after briefing and oral argument). (The Court also disposes of cases by memorandum order; such summary dispositions may occur without full briefing and argument. These cases include summary reversals and “GVRs,” cases in which the Court will grant review, vacate a lower court opinion, and remand for further consideration, perhaps in light of its decision in a related case.) Of the Court’s opinions, over 90% involved review of the decisions of the federal courts, and only seven cases came from the state courts. This tilt in the Court’s appellate docket cannot be explained by the distribution of state and federal petitions. In recent years, petitions for review of state court decisions accounted for nearly half (45%) of the Court’s total...
- A number of factors may have influenced the Court’s decision to recognize pragmatic exceptions to the final judgment rule. First, in reviewing the judgments of federal courts, the Court faces no final judgment rule. The Court has, moreover, fashioned a series of exceptions to the strict rules of finality that apply to federal circuit court review of federal district court decisions. Though obviously inapplicable to the interpretation of the statute that governs appeals from the state courts, these federal exceptions to strict finality may have influenced the Court’s approach to state decisions.
- In addition to a power to review final decisions of the highest state courts, the Supreme Court has long had power to review decisions of the lower federal courts. Indeed, as noted earlier, the great majority of cases on the Court’s appellate docket come from the federal courts. As with the state courts, the Court’s review of federal decisions has evolved into a largely discretionary exercise, with only small pockets of as-of-right review remaining (as in the provisions for direct appellate review of the decisions of three-judge courts comprised of district and circuit judges and convened to hear special challenges to state laws). This represents a substantial change from the nineteenth century, during which the Court’s appellate jurisdiction in matters coming from the lower federal courts was available to litigants as of right in economically significant cases. (As-of-right review persisted until 1988 for cases in which the lower federal court invalidated state laws on federal...
- Despite the force of this critique of the Court’s role in fashioning judge-made rules of criminal procedure, the Court’s power to exercise some supervisory authority over the proceedings of the lower federal courts rests on a relatively firm textual and historical foundation. As for text, the Constitution declares that there shall be but one Supreme Court and that all other federal courts must remain in an inferior relationship to that Court. At the time of the framing, supreme courts exercised a power of supervision over inferior courts through the issuance of a variety of supervisory writs, including the writs of mandamus, habeas corpus, prohibition, and the like. These writs enabled a supreme court to oversee the work of its judicial inferiors and to prevent lower courts from exceeding the boundaries of their jurisdiction. Supreme courts in the common law tradition also enjoyed broad authority over rules of practice and procedure. The degree to which such powers of supervision...
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Chapter 10. Congressional Control of State and Federal Jurisdiction 120 results (showing 5 best matches)
- It may be possible to develop a theory of Supreme Court oversight and control that fits tolerably well with the text, structure and history of Article III. The account proposed here emphasizes three features of Article III: its provision for a single Supreme Court, its requirement that any federal courts that Congress ordains and establishes shall be inferior to the Supreme Court, and the related Article I requirement that any tribunals that Congress constitutes as such must remain “inferior to” the Supreme Court. These provisions recognize that Congress has a certain amount of freedom to assign matters to state courts, Article I tribunals, and Article III courts for initial and possibly final determination. What Congress may not do is to place these inferior bodies beyond the supervision and control of the Supreme Court. On the account developed here, the Court must remain in a supreme-inferior relationship to all courts that handle matters within the judicial power of the United...
- Once one perceives the lower federal courts, Article I tribunals, and state courts as inferior bodies within the Article III hierarchy, the requirement of inferiority plays a common role in restricting the power of Congress to curtail all review in the Supreme Court. Congress can, to be sure, restrict the as-of-right appellate jurisdiction of the Court, as it has done. But Congress arguably cannot foreclose the sort of supervisory review necessary to preserve the inferiority of such courts. The Court might rely on its supremacy in insisting that all inferior courts and tribunals continue to adhere to the Court’s precedents in the wake of jurisdiction-stripping legislation. Moreover, the Court would presumably retain power to invalidate the decisions of any court that Congress established outside the Article III hierarchy or attempted to immunize from supreme judicial oversight. Congress appears to have understood the nature of the Court’s obligation in 1789 when it conferred...
- Despite the arguments for recognizing the right of state courts to close their doors to the enforcement of federal actions, the Supreme Court reversed. But in justifying the obligation of the state courts to hear federal claims, the Court created some ambiguity. For much of its opinion, the Court focused on the Supremacy Clause and the duty of state courts to enforce the Constitution, laws, and treaties of the United States, notwithstanding anything to the contrary in state law. According to the Court, the Clause required the state courts to treat the laws of the United States as laws of the state, rather than treating them as laws of a foreign government. The Court thus concluded that the policy judgment about the enforcement of the federal claim was one for Congress to make and for the state courts simply to accept as supreme federal law. The Court’s view of the state and federal judicial systems as closely intertwined stands in contrast to the portrait of independence drawn in
- If legislative courts and Article I tribunals occupy an anomalous place in the Article III judiciary, their position appears too well established as an institutional matter to yield to arguments based upon text and structure. Congress has established Article I tribunals to hear a wide range of matters that seemingly implicate the judicial power of the United States, and the Court has generally upheld the constitutionality of these bodies. Thus, in (1828), the Court upheld the power of the Florida territorial court to exercise jurisdiction over an admiralty proceeding. The opinion was not one of Chief Justice Marshall’s stronger efforts. He appears to have treated the absence of life-tenured judges as foreclosing territorial courts from “receiving” the judicial power of the United States under Article III. But he did not regard the absence of Article III judges as fatal to the court’s operation. Rather than a constitutional court under Article III, the territorial courts of Florida...
- Other examples of Article I tribunals abound. Beginning in 1855, Congress created a specialized court of claims to hear suits against the federal government. Although the court employed life-tenured judges, the Supreme Court ruled that the court could not exercise the judicial power of the United States because its judgments were subject to legislative review. (On the importance of finality to the exercise of judicial power under Article III, see Chapter 2.) Although the Court of Claims briefly achieved Article III status during the 20th century, see (1962), Congress later re-established the tribunal under Article I as the United States Court of Federal Claims with non-life tenured judges. Congressional use of courts-martial extends even further back into the nation’s history, dating from the 1770s when Congress first put the Continental Army into the field against the British. Courts-martial employ members of the military as judges, rather than life-tenured judges in civil courts....
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Chapter 9. Judicial Restraint, Abstention, and Coordination 113 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Avoidance could have been achieved at the federal court level, without an abstention requirement. In itself, the three-judge court had invalidated the order on state law grounds. As the Court acknowledged, the two district court judges on the three-judge panel were both from Texas and presumably quite knowledgeable about the content of that state’s law. If constitutional avoidance were the Court’s only goal, a simple affirmance of the district court’s interpretation of state law would have sufficed. (Indeed, an earlier decision, (1909) had advised district courts to rely on state law grounds where possible.) But writing three years after the Court recognized that a district court decision could not settle the meaning of state law in quite the same way as a state court determination. The federal court could decide the issue for purposes of a single case. But so long as claim or issue preclusion did not apply to the federal decision, state courts would be free to disagree with the...
- In general, our judicial system assumes that the parties may file overlapping and duplicative litigation in the state and federal courts, an assumption well illustrated in (1922). The litigation began when the Burke Company brought suit for breach of contract in federal court on the basis of diversity of citizenship. Kline defended and counterclaimed in federal court, and also brought the same contract dispute before an Arkansas state court. After the federal court declared a mistrial, Burke (the federal plaintiff) sought a federal injunction against any further prosecution of the state proceeding. Although the federal court granted the requested injunction to protect Burke’s right to a federal forum, the Supreme Court reversed. The Court acknowledged that the first court to obtain jurisdiction over a “res” that confers jurisdiction may enjoin litigation over the same property elsewhere. But the Court refused to extend the rule of first-court primacy to side of the Court’s line.
- The Court adopted much the same approach, several years later in There, disappointed applicants for admission to the D.C. bar brought suit in federal district court, asserting two claims. The first claim was that the D.C. Court of Appeals (a creature of federal statute that serves in some respects as an analog to a state supreme court) had violated the Constitution in denying a waiver of its rule requiring graduation from an ABA-accredited law school. The second claim was that the bar-admission requirement itself violated the Constitution. On review of the federal court’s dismissal for want of jurisdiction, the Court affirmed in part. It first ruled that the D.C. Court had acted judicially (not legislatively or administratively) in denying a waiver of its bar admission rules. Accordingly, review of the D.C. Court’s decision was available under section 1257, and could not be had by way of collateral attack in federal district court. (If, by contrast, the Court had found the D.C.
- The Court’s various abstention doctrines reflect an attempt to coordinate the respective roles of the state and federal courts as courts of first instance for the determination of federal claims. The exercise of this coordinating function doubtless reflects the Court’s own view of the salience of the constitutional rights at stake and the degree to which the state courts can be relied upon to effectuate them. The Court’s decisions in (1953) both reflect profound distrust of the state courts as a forum for the effective vindication of federal constitutional rights, and both adopt an expansive view of federal jurisdiction. Since those decisions were issued, the Court’s view of the importance of the underlying constitutional rights and its assessment of state court performance have clearly changed. By the 1940s, the Court no longer saw substantive due process as an important check on state ...signals a jurisdictional retreat as well. By the 1980s, the Court viewed its work in...
- Court’s benign view of overlapping or parallel litigation. While litigation in the state court did not threaten the federal court’s ability to enter a judgment binding on the parties, the state court’s own entry of judgment would bar any further federal litigation under the doctrine of claim preclusion. As a practical matter, then, the continued prosecution of the state proceeding did pose a threat to the federal court’s ability to resolve the dispute, even if it did not threaten the federal court’s jurisdiction. Moreover, the Court’s approach tends to encourage the commencement of overlapping and duplicative proceedings. Rather than treating the first-filed action as presumptively entitled to proceed to judgment, the Court foreclosed the issuance of injunctive relief that would have blocked the duplicative state proceeding. It thus enables the parties to engage in what may prove to have been wasteful litigation. Instead of a race to the courthouse, the Court has created a race to...
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Appendix. Selected Constitutional and Statutory Provisions 51 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The courts of appeals (other than the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit) shall have jurisdiction of appeals from all final decisions of the district courts of the United States, the United States District Court for the District of the Canal Zone, the District Court of Guam, and the District Court of the Virgin Islands, except where a direct review may be had in the Supreme Court. The jurisdiction of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit shall be limited to the jurisdiction described in sections 1292(c) and (d) and 1295 of this title.
- Where an application for a writ of habeas corpus is made by a person in custody under the judgment and sentence of a State court of a State which contains two or more Federal judicial districts, the application may be filed in the district court for the district wherein such person is in custody or in the district court for the district within which the State court was held which convicted and sentenced him and each of such district court shall have concurrent jurisdiction to entertain the application. The district court for the district wherein such an application is filed in the exercise of its discretion and in furtherance of justice may transfer the application to the other district court for hearing and determination.
- Except as otherwise expressly provided by Act of Congress, any civil action brought in a State court of which the district courts of the United States have original jurisdiction, may be removed by the defendant or the defendants, to the district court of the United States for the district and division embracing the place where such action is pending.
- Writs of habeas corpus may be granted by the Supreme Court, any justice thereof, the district courts and any circuit judge within their respective jurisdictions. The order of a circuit judge shall be entered in the records of the district court of the district wherein the restraint complained of is had.
- The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.
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Chapter 6. The Erie Doctrine(s) and Federal Common Law 103 results (showing 5 best matches)
- problems arise when state courts entertain federal rights of action. Like federal courts, sitting in diversity, state courts may generally apply their own procedural rules in determining such claims. And like federal diversity courts, state courts must respect the rules of decision that define the substantive rights and obligations of the parties. In an case, federal courts look to the substantive law of the states, whereas in a converse- case, state courts must follow federal substantive law. The problem arises with monotonous regularity; state courts may exercise jurisdiction over most federal rights of action (except for the relatively modest number that Congress has exclusively assigned to the federal district courts). State court concurrent jurisdiction over federal claims opens a wide field for clashes between state rules of procedure and federal substantive law.
- , the Court overturned the rule of and sent the case back for the application of state law. Although the Court did not address the issue, it apparently assumed (as did the lower courts) that Pennsylvania law would apply. Such an assumption was consistent with the prevailing choice-of-law rules of the day; most courts followed what was called the “vested rights” approach, applying the law of the place where the last act occurred that was necessary to give rise to liability. (Today, the vested rights approach has fallen into disfavor, and courts often apply policy analysis to determine which of the competing states has the most significant interest in the application of its law to the disputed question.) In a tort case, courts treated the injury as the last act, and looked to the law of the place of injury to determine the rights and liabilities of the parties. (In a contract case, courts would often look to the law of the place where the contract was made or to the place where it...
- The Court answered that open question in (1941), ruling that federal courts were obligated to apply the choice of law rules of the state in which they sit. In justifying its requirement that federal courts apply state choice of law rules, the Court emphasized vertical uniformity of result and the primacy of state courts in fashioning choice of law rules. Federal courts were not to second-guess state choice of law rules (except to the extent that they may violate federal law limits). They were instead simply to give them effect in a diversity proceeding. Such an approach might give rise to some lack of uniformity as between federal courts; different outcomes might obtain, depending on the content of the underlying state choice of law rule. But such differences in result were the legitimate product of permissible variations in the law-making choices of the state courts, and were to be tolerated as the price of a federal system.
- Second, and somewhat less enduringly, the Court developed what has come to be known as the outcome-determinative test for deciding when federal procedural law must give way to a state rule. Under this approach, the Court treated a federal court, sitting in diversity, as “only another court of the State.” If the rule would significantly affect the outcome, federal courts were bound to apply the same rule that would control a dispute between the same parties in state court. Such an approach was said to require the application of the New York limitations period, and would (presumably) require the dismissal of the action. While the holding remains sound, and the Court continues to treat issues relating to the timeliness of state law claims as controlled by state law, the outcome-determinative test has been limited and refined by subsequent decisions.
- Although the lower court reached the issue and found that the expropriation violated customary international law, the Court held that the act of state doctrine applied. Justifying the conclusion proved more difficult. The Court acknowledged that the doctrine was compelled neither by the text of the Constitution nor by controlling principles of international law. Instead, the Court traced the act of state doctrine to constitutional structure and the separation of powers. In particular, the Court viewed the executive branch as primarily responsible for the formulation of foreign policy, and saw the judicial department as playing a relatively neutral role in the enforcement of legal claims. Emphasizing the need for nationally uniform judicial response in both state and federal court, the Court justified federal common law on practical terms.
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Chapter 8. Habeas Corpus and Government Accountability 105 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The Court’s decision in , the Court held that an individual who had presented a claim of constitutional error to the state courts was free to re-litigate that claim in a federal habeas corpus proceeding. Doctrines of finality, such as those of claim and issue preclusion, were not seen as a barrier to federal judicial re-consideration of constitutional claims. Although the Court hemmed in this right of federal habeas re-litigation by requiring habeas petitioners to exhaust state court remedies and by encouraging the federal courts to pay respectful attention to the factual findings and legal conclusions of the state court, federal courts were to make an independent judgment and were free to disregard the state court resolution.
- The Court’s decision in contributes three important ideas to our understanding of habeas. First, the Court treated its power to issue habeas as a creature of statute, thus fueling an ongoing debate about whether Congress may refrain from conferring habeas authority on the federal courts. Second, the Court suggested that the Constitution’s Suspension Clause may influence the question; Congress had acted under the “immediate influence” of that Clause in enacting section 14 and may have been constitutionally obliged to do so. (Of course, the federal courts may not have been in a position to enforce Congress’s constitutional duty to make habeas available had Congress chosen to ignore it.) Third, the Court found that the proceeding to review commitment for trial was, on the facts of the case, appropriately appellate because it involved a review of the commitment and habeas decisions of the lower court in Washington, D.C. On this basis, the Court distinguished ...the Court’s original...
- The simple fact of territorially restricted judicial power, coupled with the obligation of the custodian to produce the petitioner in court, gave rise to the “district of confinement” rule. Under the rule, the federal courts entertain habeas petitions only by those actually detained within the territorial boundaries of the district. This jurisdictional limit derives from language in the 1867 law empowering federal courts and judges to issue the writ only “within their respective jurisdictions.” Congress included this language to prevent compelled production of prisoners outside their district of confinement and the Court has occasionally applied the rule. For example, in (1948), the Court ruled that the district court for the District of Columbia could not entertain a habeas petition on behalf of petitioners held at Ellis Island, New York. Even though the Attorney General of the United States was in the District, and subject to the court’s authority, the Court held that the action...
- Braden v. Judicial Circuit Court of Kentucky
- The Court took a less accommodating approach to the reform of immigration review in There, the Court faced a challenge to a federal statute that had generally shifted review of immigration proceedings to the federal appellate courts, and had proposed to restrict access to habeas review in district court. St. Cyr himself had been convicted of a drug trafficking offense that triggered provisions of the law that made him presumptively subject to deportation and that foreclosed judicial review. St. Cyr argued that such a restriction on review would violate the Suspension Clause and the Court agreed. Instead of invalidating the law, however, the Court used the canon of constitutional avoidance in interpreting the statute to preserve the possibility of habeas review by petition to the district court. In the course of its opinion, the Court helped to frame the habeas issues that would arise from the detentions at Guantanamo Bay.
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Chapter 1. The Architecture of Article III 33 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Apart from vesting the federal courts with judicial power, Article III specifies to some extent the courts that are to exercise such power. Article III vests the judicial power in “one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” This portion of Article III does at least three things. First, it requires Congress to provide for the operation of a single “supreme court,” and implicitly prohibits Congress from creating additional supreme courts with competing or overlapping jurisdiction. Second, it authorizes Congress to ordain and establish as many “inferior courts” as the judicial needs of the country may require. Third, it incorporates the Madisonian Compromise, which authorizes Congress to establish lower federal courts or to rely instead upon the state courts as courts of first instance. This section will briefly consider the unity, supremacy, and inferiority requirements; the next section will explore the Madisonian...courts
- The Madisonian Compromise informs debates about both Congress’s authority to control the jurisdiction of the lower federal courts and the degree to which state courts provide an adequate alternative forum. As for the federal courts, most observers see the Madisonian Compromise as giving Congress broad control over the existence and powers of the inferior federal courts. (The evident recognition of congressional discretion as to lower courts also helps to cement the perception that Article III creates and mandates the preservation of the Supreme Court.) For these observers, the greater power to deny all jurisdiction to the lower federal courts also gives Congress the power to create such courts and confer part, but not all, of the jurisdiction specified later in Article III section 2. As for state courts, the Madisonian Compromise implies as a matter of constitutional law that the state courts may serve as appropriate substitutes for lower federal courts. While the Compromise assumes...
- The requirement that a single Supreme Court act as the head of the judicial department operates in tandem with the requirements of supremacy and inferiority to provide a firm basis for the creation of a hierarchical judicial department. Consider first the constitutional vesting of judicial power in a single Supreme Court. This requirement of unity grounds the Court’s familiar role in expounding a nationally uniform body of law. Today, the Court sits atop a judicial pyramid, made up of a variety of state and federal judicial tribunals. In addition to its power to review decisions from the fifty state court systems, the Court may consider cases coming from any of the regional appellate courts, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and a range of other federal tribunals. Article III provides for the creation of this multitude of lower federal courts and tribunals but empowers the Supreme Court to articulate uniform legal rules to harmonize otherwise discordant voices.
- Supremacy and inferiority help cement the Court’s role in unifying federal law by creating a hierarchical relationship between superior and inferior courts. In such a hierarchy, lower courts must obey the decisions of their judicial superiors, and give effect to the Court’s pronouncements. If they fail to do so, they invite an appeal to a superior court and a reversal of their decision. See Caminker (1994). Such a hierarchical system also enables individual litigants to secure the enforcement of their rights at relatively lower levels of the Article III pyramid, and avoid the expense and inconvenience of litigating all the way to the Supreme Court to obtain access to controlling federal law. Hierarchy thus plays an important role in ensuring the application of the Supreme Court’s controlling determinations of federal law by lower tribunals throughout the country.
- Article III vests the judicial power in the Supreme Court, and in “such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” The permissive phrasing of the provision reflects the decision of the framers to empower, but not require, Congress to establish inferior federal courts. Known as the Madisonian Compromise, the provision grew out of a debate at the constitutional convention in Philadelphia between those (like James Madison and James Wilson) who regarded inferior federal courts as essential to an effective judicial department and those (like Roger Sherman and Luther Martin) who thought the state courts could act as courts of first instance, subject to an appeal to the Supreme Court. Although the advocates of reliance on the state courts won an initial vote to eliminate a provision mandating lower federal courts, Madison and Wilson engineered a compromise that restored Congress’s power to provide for such federal bodies if, in its judgment, they were...
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Chapter 5. Original Jurisdiction of the Federal District Courts 109 results (showing 5 best matches)
- A second debate over lower federal courts took place during the drafting of the Judiciary Act of 1789. Most Federalists supported the creation of a federal court system, expecting such courts to favor the interests of the creditor class and to insist upon a strict enforcement of federal revenue measures. Opponents viewed the proposed federal courts as expensive and unnecessary, given the availability of state courts. Federalists responded by questioning the ability of Congress to appoint state courts to hear federal causes of action; state courts employed judges who lacked life tenure and whose appointment did not comport with the requirements of the federal Constitution (nomination by the president and confirmation by the Senate). (As noted in Chapter 10, state courts might hear federal claims as tribunals constituted under Article I rather than as Article III courts.) In the end, the Federalists carried the point, and the Judiciary Act established federal district (and federal...
- The combination of the Madisonian compromise and the early experience with the creation and destruction of lower federal courts has persuaded most observers that Congress enjoys broad control over the existence and jurisdiction of the lower federal courts. (A similar consensus views the Supreme Court as constitutionally established and as impervious to congressional destruction. Thus, the Judiciary Act of 1789 established federal district courts, but assumed the existence of the Supreme Court and provided for the appointment of six justices to serve on the bench.) A vocal minority has argued that the Constitution mandates the creation of lower federal courts to hear some matters within federal jurisdiction, usually federal criminal cases and cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction. See Collins (1995) (collecting examples). Others have contended that practical changes in the operation of the federal judiciary may necessitate lower federal courts, either as (1) substitutes for a...
- rule came at a time when the consequences of denying an original federal forum were less dramatic. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Supreme Court closely monitored state court decisions involving the denial of a claim or defense based upon federal law; parties could appeal from a state court’s denial of a federal claim as a matter of right. By denying original jurisdiction, the Court chose to treat federal defenses as matters to be resolved by it upon appellate review, rather than by a lower federal court in the first instance. Today, the parties no longer have a right to appellate review of state court decisions; the Court exercises discretion over its appellate docket and often turns away petitions seeking review of state court decisions. With this change, the rule no longer simply shifts the first instance determination to state court for ultimate review on the Court’s appellate docket, but operates to foreclose federal jurisdiction altogether in virtually all cases.
- The posture of the case was a bit tricky. The plaintiff sued in state court and lost when the state court agreed with the defendants that his patent was invalid. (Note that the prior federal court finding of patent invalidity did not preclude re-litigation of that issue in the malpractice proceeding; plaintiff contended in the second proceeding that he would have won earlier if his lawyers had not waived the crucial argument.) On appeal, he attacked the jurisdiction of the state court, arguing that his state-law malpractice action arose under federal patent law and thereby came within the scope of 28 U.S.C. § 1338, which confers exclusive federal jurisdiction over claims arising under the patent laws. Such federal-question patent claims must be litigated in federal district court in the first instance and may be reviewed on appeal only in the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The Texas state supreme court agreed with the plaintiff, concluding that because the...
- Court thus accomplished two goals. First, the Court narrowed access to federal court, making it slightly more difficult for parties to invoke federal ingredient jurisdiction. Second, the Court constructed something of a bright-line rule in concluding that patent malpractice litigation should almost always stay in state court. But the Court’s handling of precedent (both its own and that which would be created in state courts) creates the potential for future contestation. , by contrast, the Court could discern no substantial systemic effects aside from the (relatively insubstantial) impact the case would have on the interests of private litigants. But in that only the interests of private litigants were directly represented in the litigation; the government was not named as a party in those two cases. Had the Court refused to permit the assertion of federal jurisdiction, moreover, the decisions in those two cases would have considerably narrowed the precedential impact of state court
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Chapter 2. The Nature of the Judicial Power 169 results (showing 5 best matches)
- A more subtle form of legal process argument might emphasize the importance of maintaining judicial distance as an argument against expanded original jurisdiction. Frequently today, the Court hears questions of constitutional law some months or years after the passage of the immediate crisis that gave rise to the issue. Exceptions do exist; the Pentagon Papers case proceeded swiftly to the Court’s appellate docket, see (1952). But often an issue will work its way through the lower state and federal courts for a time before it comes to the Court for ultimate resolution. At this later stage, the Court may have the benefit of the considered opinions of several lower court judges as well as those of legal scholars. Meanwhile, political passions may have cooled, enabling the Court to speak as an organ of sober second thought. See Bickel (1962). If Congress were free to expand the Court’s original jurisdiction, it might hurry constitutional questions onto the Court’s docket for possibly...
- Congress’s agreement to pay was some time in coming, but it has now arrived. As a first measure, Congress in 1855 created the Court of Claims to hear the claims of government contractors who were supplying goods and services to the federal government. Like the veterans’ benefit statute invalidated in , the provision for the judicial determination of claims reserved legislative control of payment decisions. The Supreme Court found that the lack of judicial finality foreclosed it from exercising appellate jurisdiction over the decisions of the Court of Claims. (1864). The Court of Claims was thus said to function as a legislative or Article I court, established outside the strictures of Article III and not subject to the same finality requirements. (For a more detailed analysis of legislative courts, see Chapter 10.) In keeping with its status as a legislative court, the Court of Claims long exercised an advisory jurisdiction, proposing the disposition of issues referred to it by...
- Although the Court of Federal Claims continues to operate outside of Article III, Congress has now provided sufficient finality to clear the way for appellate review in the Article III courts. Under the terms of a standing appropriation law, known as the Judgment Fund, Congress will pay any judgment rendered by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims (and by any Article III court). The Supreme Court has ruled that this standing authorization provides the practical finality that was missing in and thus permits Article III courts to hear money claims against the government. See (1962). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, an Article III court, now reviews decisions of the Court of Federal Claims without concern that such review exceeds the scope of the judicial power.
- Similarly, the Court’s rejection of the assertion of the pattern-or-practice claim in effectively forecloses federal district court oversight of many state practices. How effective are the other forms of judicial oversight? Many features of the criminal justice system (bond, sentencing, jury selection) routinely come before the state courts for decision. One might view the Court’s discretionary power to review such decisions through certiorari as an adequate federal judicial remedy. On the other hand, one can question the Court’s ability to provide effective oversight of the thousands of decisions that take place each year in the state courts. As a practical matter, the rejection of the claims in serves to entrust the state courts with primary responsibility for remedying problems with the administration of local justice. One’s confidence in the capacity of state courts to perform this oversight function may shape one’s attitude toward the ripeness doctrine in
- The Supreme Court disagreed. The lower courts had erred in treating the question as one that would require the judiciary to determine the political status of Jerusalem. Federal courts would lack judicially manageable standards to conduct that sort of determination. But the case at hand did not require such a determination; instead, it called for the federal courts to play a familiar role in evaluating the constitutionality of an Act of Congress. There was, needless to say, no textually demonstrable commitment of such questions to the political branches: the federal courts pass on the constitutionality of statutes every day. Similarly, while the judiciary may lack standards with which to assess the status of Jerusalem, it has ample tools with which to evaluate constitutional questions. The Court pointed to the range of familiar sources that were said to be relevant to the constitutional question, including arguments from text, history, structure, and practice. The Court accordingly...
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Chapter 3. The Supreme Court’s Original Jurisdiction 17 results (showing 5 best matches)
- This chapter provides a brief introduction to the Court’s original jurisdiction. It first describes the modern function of the Court’s original jurisdiction in state-party cases and then examines the jurisdiction’s scope, historical origins, and implications. Questions relating to the Court’s supervisory powers, exercised through petitions for habeas corpus and mandamus, are deferred to the chapter on the Court’s appellate jurisdiction.
- Unlike other federal courts with original jurisdiction, the Supreme Court does not permit the parties to invoke its original jurisdiction as a matter of right. Rather, the plaintiff must petition for leave to file and can docket an original complaint only with the Court’s permission. In a leading case, (1971), the Court acknowledged the traditional understanding of original jurisdiction as available to the parties as a matter of right; it nonetheless found that changes over time made discretion essential. The Court pointed out that as-of-right access might interfere with its role as the final federal appellate court. Additionally, it noted that many of the cases that qualify for original jurisdiction do so on the basis of the alignment of the parties and might turn on questions of state common law. (Chapter 6 explores the doctrine and its requirement that district courts, hearing cases on the basis of diversity jurisdiction, apply the law of the states in which they sit.) The
- A variety of factors appear to shape the Court’s selection of cases for original determination. One important factor has been the availability of an alternative forum. In 28 U.S.C. § 1251, Congress declared the Court’s jurisdiction in controversies between two or more states to be both “original and exclusive.” Exclusivity forecloses other courts from entertaining the claims and puts some pressure on the Court to grant leave to file. (Indeed, one might regard the predominance of state-state litigation on the Court’s docket as an outgrowth of statutory exclusivity, rather than as a reflection of the Court’s perception of the relative importance of such matters.) Congress has defined the remainder of the Court’s original jurisdiction as non-exclusive, which permits lower federal (and state) courts to hear the claims concurrently (assuming they have jurisdiction). In such cases of non-exclusivity, the Court may refuse leave to file after assuring itself that another forum would be...
- The deceptively straightforward words of Article III, section 2 provide that the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction in “all cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party.” Despite its considerable historical importance, the jurisdiction does not account for a very significant share of the Court’s modern docket. The Court issues some 80 full opinions each year in appellate cases, but may issue no more than one or two opinions in original cases. The tilt in favor of the appellate docket reflects the Court’s own conception of how best to deploy its decisional resources. For much of past century, the Court has exercised a degree of discretion over the decision to hear a case originally or on appeal. Plainly, the Court regards its time as better spent on appellate matters.
- At least two considerations help to explain the Court’s preference for its appellate docket. Original cases can present complex factual disputes that require the appointment of a special master and some degree of judicial oversight. The fact-bound nature of the disputes makes them relatively time consuming and less effective as vehicles for the articulation of legal rules of national significance. Appellate cases, by contrast, do not require any further factual development; the Court chooses them on the basis of the legal issues they present and calls for briefs and oral argument. A second reason may inform the Court’s appellate preference: with appellate cases, the Court can await the development of the legal issues in lower court litigation. In original matters, the Court provides both the initial and final resolution of the matter. What it gains in speed of decision, as when it heard original state challenges to voting rights legislation in the 1960s, ..., the Court may lose in...
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Chapter 7. Government Accountability 145 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Despite Article III’s provision for broad federal judicial engagement, government accountability legislation got off to mixed start. In the Judiciary Act of 1789, Congress declined to confer federal jurisdiction over claims against federal government officials as such; many tort claims against federal officers were thus left to the state courts (subject, of course, to review in the Supreme Court). On the other hand, the separate law that regulated the collection of customs authorized an officer suit in federal court to challenge government exactions. As for the common law or supervisory writs, the Judiciary Act conferred relatively generous authority on the federal courts. Section 13 of the Act conferred mandamus power on the Supreme Court (power that reached both inferior officers and inferior courts), and gave the Court power to issue writs of prohibition to federal courts in admiralty cases. All federal judges were given the power to issue writs of habeas corpus in cases...
- The discussion begins with the Tucker Act, which confers jurisdiction on the Court of Claims to hear claims based upon the Constitution, laws, and regulations of the United States, and claims, “not sounding in tort,” in which the United States would bear liability if it were subject to suit. As the jurisdictional grant makes clear, Congress took the position that the United States already owed a legal obligation to claimants; the Tucker Act simply conferred the necessary jurisdiction to enable those obligations to be heard by a court instead of by the claims committee of Congress. For the first several decades of its existence, the Court of Claims was treated as an Article I tribunal, and its decisions were subject to a degree of legislative oversight. The Court of Claims briefly became an Article III court during the middle of the last century but in 1982, Congress re-designated it the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and returned it to Article I status. (On the distinction between...
- The Court added another wrinkle in (1984). There, the plaintiffs had sued state officials in federal court, seeking relief from a range of alleged constitutional and statutory violations. In addition, the plaintiffs sought relief on the basis of state law, invoking the district court’s supplemental jurisdiction. Ultimately, the district court granted relief on state law grounds, in part to avoid the determination of constitutional issues. But the Court ruled that such an order violated the state’s immunity from suit. While the Court acknowledged that the order would qualify as prospective relief within the meaning of fiction did not extend to injunctive relief based upon state law. As to such claims, there was no need to ensure the enforcement of federal law and no justification for overriding the state’s immunity. In effect, the Court balanced the two interests and concluded that the state interest in immunity predominated, apparently on the ground that the state courts...
- Many turned to state court. If Congress had the power to fashion rights against the states, and if the Eleventh Amendment foreclosed the enforcement of such rights in federal courts, then perhaps individuals could pursue their claims in state court, relying either on the states’ own waivers of sovereign immunity or on the obligation of the states to make a forum available for the enforcement of federal rights. (As noted in Section 10.2.2, states cannot refuse to hear federal claims if they open their doors to analogous state law claims.) Litigants filing suit in state court could point to a fairly impressive collection of cases in which the Court appeared to assume that state courts were open for the enforcement of federal rights, even where the Eleventh Amendment would bar suit in federal court. See (1991). Under long-standing decisional law, moreover, the Supreme Court exercised appellate jurisdiction over state court decisions, even where the same cases would lie beyond the...
- Court concluded in effect that the immunity barred liability and thus foreclosed suit in state court. In the first section of its opinion, the Court labored to show that the issue remained open for decision, distinguishing by brute force many of the precedents that leaned in the other direction. In the second part, the Court returned to the history and structure of government accountability, emphasizing the absence of any assured opportunity to litigate money claims against the states in state courts at the time of the framing. As the Court explained, it was extremely unlikely that the framers meant to empower Congress to impose an obligation on state courts to hear federal claims. The Court’s statement may have been true, but it missed the point. The framers had responded to the absence of assured state court remedies by empowering the federal courts to hear state-party claims. Federal authority was preserved under the Eleventh Amendment, and later impaired by judicial...
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Summary of Contents 12 results (showing 5 best matches)
Table of Authorities 54 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Evan Caminker, Why Must Inferior Courts Obey Superior Court Precedents?, 46 Stan. L. Rev. 817 (1994)—
- Judith Resnik, Rereading “The Federal Courts”: Revising the Domain of Federal Courts Jurisprudence at the End of the Twentieth Century, 47 Vand. L. Rev. 1021 (1994)—
- Theodore W. Ruger, Pauline T. Kim, Andrew D. Martin, & Kevin M. Quinn, The Supreme Court Forecasting Project: Legal and Political Science Approaches to Predicting Supreme Court Decisionmaking, 104 Colum. L. Rev. 1150 (2004)—
- Akhil Reed Amar, Marbury, Section 13, and the Original Jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, 56 U. Chi. L. Rev. 443 (1989)—
- American Law Institute (ALI), Study of the Division of Jurisdiction Between State and Federal Courts (1969), Preface
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Preface 3 results
- This book provides an introduction to the principles of federal jurisdiction, aimed primarily at law students in advanced courses. It seeks to convey two related bodies of knowledge. First, the book offers students an overview of certain canonical features of jurisdictional law. Most courses in federal jurisdiction include discussions of Marbury v. Madison (1803), Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins (1938), the Madisonian Compromise, the abstention doctrines, and the jurisdictional rules of standing, ripeness, and mootness. Knowledge of these rules, which structure (and sometimes frustrate) an individual’s attempt to invoke the power of federal courts, will serve students well on bar exams and in practice. Such knowledge will also enable the student to evaluate the impact of changes in the rules. If Congress or the Supreme Court curtails access to federal trial courts, for example, students should know that the decision may put more pressure on the Court’s appellate docket as the only federal...
- This book attempts to convey both the canonical doctrines and the argumentative possibilities that together make up the principles of federal jurisdiction. In addition to providing background information on the leading doctrines, the book will set out the principles articulated in the cases and the impact those principles have had on the shape of jurisdictional law. By necessity in a book of relatively compact size, the discussion will focus on the field’s leading cases and will omit many issues of detail that one can readily find in more encyclopedic treatises. Decisions of the Supreme Court provide the foundation for much of the discussion, but the book also draws on the work of scholars to probe judicial pronouncements. For simplicity, I have cited judicial decisions by party names, year of decision, and court, if not the Supreme Court. I have cited scholarly authorities by referring to the author’s last name and the year of publication. More complete citations appear in tables...
- ...students to make sophisticated arguments about the evolution of jurisdictional law. Law school students tend to think that the rules of law in their casebooks will remain fixed for the foreseeable future. But dramatic changes in law can occur in a very short time, occasioned by the government’s responses to world events and subtle changes in legal culture. If the Bush Administration’s response to terrorist attacks illustrates the impact of world events, shifting attitudes toward diversity jurisdiction provide a serviceable example of cultural change. A generation ago, many saw diversity jurisdiction as a waste of federal judicial resources, and influential organizations such as the American Law Institute (ALI), the Judicial Conference of the United States, and the Federal Courts Study Committee called for its legislative repeal. See ALI (1969). Today, diversity jurisdiction has enjoyed something of a rebirth. Not only has Congress redrawn jurisdictional boundaries to... ...courts...
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Table of Contents 16 results (showing 5 best matches)
Index 41 results (showing 5 best matches)
Table of Cases 3 results
- Braden v. 30th Judicial Circuit Court of Kentucky, 410 U.S. 484, 93 S.Ct. 1123, 35 L.Ed.2d 443 (1973)—
- District of Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462, 103 S.Ct. 1303, 75 L.Ed.2d 206 (1983)—
- Hensley v. Municipal Court, San Jose Milpitas Judicial Dist., Santa Clara County, California, 411 U.S. 345, 93 S.Ct. 1571, 36 L.Ed.2d 294 (1973)—
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- Publication Date: December 30th, 2016
- ISBN: 9781634603034
- Subject: Civil Procedure
- Series: Concise Hornbook Series
- Type: Hornbook Treatises
- Description: Designed for students in advanced courses and newly revised, this book explains the leading principles of federal jurisdiction. It covers such landmarks as Marbury v. Madison and Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents and the rules that govern original and appellate jurisdiction, justiciability and abstention, federal habeas corpus, and sovereign immunity. It discusses the enemy combatant cases, culminating in Boumediene, and recent Supreme Court decisions on such diverse issues as the legal foundation of the Ex parte Young action, the limits of federal ingredient jurisdiction, the demise of prudential standing, and the jurisdictional nuances of consumer class action litigation. Perhaps most important, the book provides students with a sense of the argumentative possibilities available to lawyers and jurists working within the federal courts’ tradition.