Courts Commons^™

Treating Juveniles Like Juveniles: Getting Rid Of Transfer And Expanded Adult Court Jurisdiction, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The number of juveniles transferred to adult court has skyrocketed in the past two decades and has only recently begun to level off. This symposium article argues that, because it wastes resources, damages juveniles, and decreases public safety, transfer should be abolished. It also argues that the diminished culpability rationale that has had much-deserved success at eliminating the juvenile death penalty and mandatory life without parole for juveniles is not likely to have a major impact on the much more prevalent practices of transferring mid- and older-adolescents to adult court and expanding adult court jurisdiction to adolescents; neither the law …

On The Efficient Deployment Of Rules And Standards To Define Federal Jurisdiction, Jonathan R. Nash

Vanderbilt Law Review

Congress and the federal courts have traditionally adopted rules, as opposed to standards, to establish the boundaries of federal district court jurisdiction. More recently, the Supreme Court has strayed from this path in two areas: federal question jurisdiction and admiralty jurisdiction. Commentators have generally supported the use of discretion in determining federal question jurisdiction, but they have not recognized the relationship to the rule-standard distinction, nor more importantly have they considered the importance of where discretion enters the jurisdictional calculus. This Article argues that predictability and efficiency make it normatively desirable to have rules predominate jurisdictional boundaries and thus to …

International Law In Domestic Courts And The Jurisdictional Immunities Of The State Case, Ingrid Wuerth

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

National court litigation in Greece and Italy prompted Germany to bring suit before the international Court of Justice (‘ICJ’), resulting in the Jurisdictional Immunities of the State judgment. The history of that litigation, as well as the ICJ’s judgment itself, raise two questions about the relationship between executive branches and courts. First, if national court decisions conflict with the views of the forum state’s executive branch, which controls for the purpose of determining state practice in customary international law? Secondly, are national courts more likely to produce ‘outlier’ decisions that challenge or undermine existing international law when the forum state’s …

Cooperative Interbranch Federalism: Certification Of State-Law Questions By Federal Agencies, Verity Winship

Vanderbilt Law Review

When an unresolved state-law question arises in federal court, the court may certify it to the relevant state court. The practice of certification from one court to another has been widely adopted and has been touted as "help[ing] build a cooperative judicial federalism." This Article proposes that states promote cooperative interbranch federalism by allowing federal agencies to certify unresolved state-law questions to state courts. It draws on Delaware's recent expansion of potential certifying entities to the Securities and Exchange Commission to argue that this innovation should be extended to other states and other federal agencies. Certification from federal agencies to …

Foreign Relations And Federal Questions: Resolving The Judicial Split On Federal Court Jurisdiction, Erin E. Terrell

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The federal circuit courts have disagreed concerning a fundamental issue of federal court jurisdiction: whether cases that may implicate or involve the "foreign relations" of the United States, but do not otherwise raise a more traditional "federal question" under federal law, may be removed from state courts to federal courts. This Note examines the cases that have created the split, and proposes two potential resolutions to it, one judicial and the other legislative.

The Demise Of Hypothetical Jurisdiction In The Federal Courts, Scott C. Idleman

Vanderbilt Law Review

Recent years have witnessed a modest but expanding Supreme Court effort to return the national government to its structural first principles.' Foremost among these is that federal power, although vast, is neither inherent nor unbounded, but consists only of that granted by the Constitution. In 1998, the Court remained steadfast to this precept, thwarting yet another attempt by a federal branch to exceed its limited and enumerated constitutional powers. This time, however, the perpetrator was none other than the Article IH judiciary itself. In Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Environment, the Court formally denounced the federal court practice …

Considering New Issues On Appeal: The General Rule And The Gorilla Rule, Robert J. Martineau

Vanderbilt Law Review

One aspect of the appellate process that most bedevils judges and lawyers occurs when a party attempts to raise an issue in the appellate court that it did not present to the trial court. This question creates problems for the following reasons: (1) the general rule against considering new issues on appeal; (2) the perception that it is unfair to the appellant if the new issue is not considered, yet it is unfair to the appellee if the new issue is considered; and (3) the failure or inability of appellate courts to articulate any principled basis for determining when and …

Case Digest, Journal Staff

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Case Digest--

Spouse of Injured Seaman May Recover Damages for Loss of Society under Maritime Common Law

Federal District Court Lacks Jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1350 over Fraud Action Brought by Alien when Claim Fails to Implicate a Treaty or Body of Rules Governing Relations between Foreign States

Jurisdiction under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act Requires at Least a Finding of International Shoe "Minimum Contacts"

Appellate Court will not Review the Post-Settlement Appeal of a Pre-Settlement Provisional Remedy without District Court Consideration of the Intervening Events

Foreign States are Subject to Liability for Non-Commercial Torts arising from the Commercial …

Jurisdiction And Procedure Of The Court Of Justice Of The European Communities, Robert A. Buchanan

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The Court of Justice of the European Communities is the final adjudicatory body for questions arising under the three Community treaties--the European Economic Community Treaty (EEC), the European Coal and Steel Community Treaty (ECSC), and the European Atomic Energy Community Treaty (EUR-ATOM). Since none of the treaties confers upon the Court the power to adjudicate questions involving the domestic laws of Member States, the Court's jurisdiction extends only to interpretation of Community law. Basically, the jurisdiction of the Court can be divided into the following subject areas: actions against Member States, actions against Community institutions, claims for damages against the …

Expanded Bases Of Jurisdiction -- An Examination Of Tennessee's New "Long-Arm" Statute, Harry G. Nichol, Jr.

Vanderbilt Law Review

A foreign corporation considering the consequences of its activity in relation to forums outside the state of its incorporation is faced with three basic legal problems. They are generally regarded as the different degrees of "doing business" for purposes of (1) qualification,(2) taxation, and (3) judicial jurisdiction. The purpose of this paper is to discuss a major recent development concerning the jurisdiction of Tennessee courts, in light of similar developments throughout the country.

Equity -- 1961 Tennessee Survey (Ii), T. A. Smedley

Vanderbilt Law Review

During the current survey period, each of the higher Tennessee courts has been called upon to exercise its injunctive powers in significant and perplexing types of controversies. The court of appeals for the western section had to decide whether to take the risk of interfering in a bitter dispute between opposing factions of a church which had been torn by interfraternal strife for several years. In the middle section court of appeals an injunction was sought to restrain a store owner from operating his business under the name of a former manager of the store who had left this position …

Jurisdiction Of United States District Courts In Multiple-Claim Cases, Thomas F. Green Jr.

Vanderbilt Law Review

The jurisdictional problem peculiar to a case which involves more than one claim is: Shall the court entertain the entire action when it would have jurisdiction of one or more of the claims, but not all, if they were sued separately?' The application of this question to the United States district courts raises conflicting considerations. On the one hand is the fact that most of the claims which would not be within federal jurisdiction if sued alone, present questions of state rather than federal law. In general the more appropriate tribunals to deal with such questions in the first instance …

Jury Trial In Chancery Court In Tennessee, Frank C. Ingraham

Vanderbilt Law Review

Tennessee has since 1827 maintained, in some degree, a separate court of equity, presided over by a chancellor. Though most states have abolished the procedural distinction between cases in law and suits in equity, Tennessee still retains this dichotomy in its court system. Prior to 1827 law and equity were dispensed in Tennessee by a single court of general jurisdiction, the Superior Court of Law. This practice grew out of the North Carolina Act of 1782 and the continuation of that Act by the First Territorial Legislature in 1794, both of which gave equity jurisdiction to the Superior Court of …

Jurisdictional Amount In The Federal District Courts, William W. Hurst

Vanderbilt Law Review

In 1925, Judge Dobie, then professor of law at the University of Virginia, advanced a formula for determining the value of the matter in controversy in all federal question and diverse citizenship cases in the federal district courts. He called it a "plaintiff-viewpoint rule," and stated it thus: "The amount in controversy in the United States District Court is always to be determined by the value to the plaintiff of the right which he in good faith asserts in his pleading that sets forth the operative facts which constitute his cause of action."

Since then, the rule has received sanction …

The Tidewater Case And Limited Jurisdiction Of Federal "Constitutional" Courts, Joe H. Foy

Vanderbilt Law Review

In the recent case of National Mutual Insurance Ca. v. Tidewater Transfer Co.,' the Act of April 20, 1940, allowing citizens of the District of Columbia and of the territories to sue and be sued in the district courts on the basis of diverse citizenship, was held constitutional insofar as it applies to citizens of the District of Columbia. The practical effect of the decision, in allowing Congress to remove a basic inequality among citizens of the United States, is perhaps commendable. However, there are broad theoretical implications in this holding, emphasized by sharp debate among the justices, which could …