The framers, historical research demonstrates, for reasons of pure spite, refused to provide precise answers to twenty-first century constitutional questions when framing their eighteenth century constitution.
My best guess, emphasis on "guess" is as follows. A central purpose of the federal court system was to ensure that federal law would be followed in the provinces (Martin Shapiro is good on this as a more general phenomenon). This proved quite controversial and one response, embodied in the Judiciary Act of 1789, was to limit the federal question jurisdiction of federal courts. Still, my best reading of the constitution is that when Congress does give federal courts jurisdiction over a federal question, and the lower federal court reverses a state court ruling, the state court is bound by that ruling unless it is reversed by the Supreme Court. Mark A. Graber [EMAIL PROTECTED]
