Law Commons^™

General Law In Federal Court, Anthony J. Bellia Jr., Bradford R. Clark

Anthony J. Bellia

No abstract provided.

Federal Regulation Of State Court Procedures, Anthony J. Bellia

Anthony J. Bellia

May Congress regulate the procedures by which state courts adjudicate claims arising under state law? Recently, Congress not only has considered several bills that would do so, but has enacted a few of them. This Article concludes that such laws exceed Congress's constitutional authority. There are serious questions as to whether a regulation of court procedures qualifies as a regulation of interstate commerce under the Commerce Clause. Even assuming, however, that it does qualify as such, the Tenth Amendment reserves the power to regulate court procedures to the states. Members of the Founding generation used conflict-of-laws language to describe a …

The Origins Of Article Iii "Arising Under" Jurisdiction, Anthony J. Bellia

Anthony J. Bellia

Article III of the Constitution provides that the judicial Power of the United States extends to all cases arising under the Constitution, laws, and treaties of the United States. What the phrase arising under imports in Article III has long confounded courts and scholars. This Article examines the historical origins of Article III arising under jurisdiction. First, it describes English legal principles that governed the jurisdiction of courts of general and limited jurisdiction--principles that animated early American jurisprudence regarding the scope of arising under jurisdiction. Second, it explains how participants in the framing and ratification of the Constitution understood arising …

"Standing" In The Shadow Of Erie: Federalism In The Balance In Hollingsworth V. Perry, Glenn Koppel

Glenn Koppel

Abstract “Standing” in the Shadow of Erie: Federalism in the Balance in Hollingsworth v. Perry In Hollingsworth v. Perry, one of the two same-sex marriage cases decided by the Supreme Court in 2013, the Court declined to address the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8, finding that the initiative proponents lacked standing to appeal the district court’s judgment declaring the proposition unconstitutional and enjoining its enforcement. Since the State’s Governor and Attorney General declined to appeal, the proponents sought to assert the State’s particularized interest in the proposition’s validity. State law, as interpreted by the California Supreme Court, grants authority to …

The Twin Aims Of Erie, Michael S. Green

Faculty Publications

We all remember the twin aims of the Erie rule from first-year civil procedure. A federal court sitting in diversity must use forum state law if it is necessary to avoid 'forum shopping" and the "inequitable administration of the laws." This Article offers a reading of the twin aims and a systematic analysis of their proper role in federal and state court. I argue that the twin aims apply in diversity cases not because they protect state interests, but because they serve the federal purposes standing behind the diversity statute. So understood, they are about separation of powers, not federalism. …

Conflicting Federal And State Medical Marijuana Policies: A Threat To Cooperative Federalism, Todd Grabarsky

Todd Grabarsky

The legal status of medical marijuana in the United States is something of a paradox. On one hand, federal government has placed a ban on the drug with no exceptions. On the other hand, over one-third of the states have that legalizes the cultivation, distribution, and consumption of the drug for medical purposes. As such, the usage of medical marijuana is an activity that is at the same time proscribed (by the federal government) and encouraged (by state governments through their systems of regulation and taxation). This Article seeks to shed light on this unprecedented nebulous zone of legality in …

Deciding Who Decides: Searching For A Deference Standard When Agencies Preempt State Law, John R. Ablan

John R Ablan

When a federal agency determines that the statute that it administers or regulations it has promulgated preempt state law, how much deference must a federal court give to that determination? In Wyeth v. Levine, the Supreme Court expressly declined to decide what standard of deference courts should apply when an agency makes a preemption determination pursuant to a specific congressional delegation to do so. Under this circumstance, this Article counsels against applying any single deference standard to an agency’s entire determination. Instead, it observes that preemption determinations are a complex inquiry involving questions of federal law, state law, and …

Can Erie Survive As Federal Common Law?, Craig Green

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

General Law In Federal Court, Anthony J. Bellia Jr., Bradford R. Clark

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Federal Common Law Of Statutory Interpretation: Erie For The Age Of Statutes, Abbe R. Gluck

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Untethered Norms After Erie Railroad Co. V. Tompkins: Positivism, International Law, And The Return Of The "Brooding Omnipresence", Lea Brilmayer

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Critical Guide To Erie Railroad Co. V. Tompkins, Caleb Nelson

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bankruptcy Federalism: A Doctrine Askew , Margaret Howard

Margaret Howard

No abstract provided.

Ending Judgment Arbitrage: Jurisdictional Competition And The Enforcement Of Foreign Money Judgments In The United States, Gregory Shill

Gregory Shill

Recent multi-billion-dollar damage awards issued by foreign courts against large American companies have focused attention on the once-obscure, patchwork system of enforcing foreign-country judgments in the United States. That system’s structural problems are even more serious than its critics have charged. However, the leading proposals for reform overlook the positive potential embedded in its design.

In the United States, no treaty or federal law controls the domestication of foreign judgments; the process is instead governed by state law. Although they are often conflated in practice, the procedure consists of two formally and conceptually distinct stages: foreign judgments must first be …