I'm still not sure what Mark means here by positing that a situation in
which a "lower federal court reverses a state court decision."
Under the statutes that have been in effect from the Judiciary Act of 1789
forward, the inferior federal courts have lacked appellate jurisdiction
over state court judgments. While I see no constitutional impediment to
Congress providing the inferior federal courts with such appellate
jurisdiction over state court judgments -- and The Federalist specifically
endorsed such a possibility -- Congress has never chosen to do so (unless
one counts an 1863 statute, limited to the period of the rebellion, that
permitted post-judgment removal and retrial of certain cases).
If Mark is not talking about appellate review, and is using the term
"reverses" to mean "refuses to follow as precedent," I think it clear that
state courts have no obligation to follow the precedents of the inferior
federal courts. The law of vertical precedent follows the lines of
appellate review. State courts have no obligation to follow the precedents
of inferior federal courts for the same reason that United States District
Court for the Southern District of New York has no obligation to follow the
precedents of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit:
Given the way that Congress has set up the lines of appellate authority,
inferior federal courts lack appellate jurisdiction over state courts and
the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit lacks appellate
jurisdiction over the United States District Court for the Southern
District of New York. See, e.g.,
Dewey v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 121 N.J. 69, 79 ( 1990) .
If Mark is talking about a federal court judgment that imposes an
obligation on a state official contrary to an obligation imposed on that
official by a state court judgment -- such as where a state court judgment
of sentence authorizes a warden to hold a person in custody and a federal
court issues a writ of habeas corpus requiring the warden to free the
person -- it is true that the state court judgment is no excuse for failure
to comply with the federal court judgment: If the warden refuses to free
the person in compliance with the federal court judgment he can be found in
contempt and find himself in federal custody. But in such a situation, the
state court need not do anything; it is perfectly appropriate for the state
court to "ignore" the federal court judgment in the sense of doing nothing
at all.
Ed Hartnett
Seton Hall
Mark Graber
<[EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
DU> cc:
Sent by: Discussion Subject: Re: Cooper Redux? (Re:
Marshall & Upholding
list for con law Federal Statutes)
professors
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]
v.ucla.edu>
08/16/03 04:28 PM
Please respond to
Discussion list for
con law professors
We may not be disagreeing, in large part because I think the framers had
no generally agreed upon theory (or even broad understanding) of the
distinction presently made between judicial review and judicial
supremacy.
My point is simply this.
A lower federal court reverses a state court decision. The Supreme
Court does not review, either because cert is denied, no appeal is made,
or no jurisdiction exists. The state court cannot ignore the lower
federal court ruling in that case (i.e., cannot say that Jones will be
executed unless the Supreme Court agrees we cannot execute Jones).
That's all.
MAG
>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 08/16/03 15:57 PM >>>
I'm not sure I understand this. Lower federal courts can't literally
reverse state court rulings; that's the point of Rooker-Feldman. And
in practice I know that at least some state supreme courts do not
consider themselves bound by the rulings of "their" federal circuit,
though they tend to defer. (There are Illinois supreme court decisions
saying this about the Seventh Circuit; I don't know about the other
states.) That surprised me a bit when I first encountered it, but it's
federal *law* that binds state courts, not federal judicial opinions,
so I think it makes sense that state courts aren't bound by lower
federal court interpretations of federal law, in just the same way that
federal courts aren't bound by lower state court interpretations of
state law.
Thus I would think you could in theory get situations in which a state
supreme court disagreed with its circuit on a federal question and the
two systems went their separate ways--the state courts affirming
convictions, for instance, and the district courts ordering habeas
relief. (AEDPA, of course, has restricted the availability of relief
based on circuit law, so you won't see this in practice.) But in this
circumstance I don't think that state officials could rely on state-
court rulings to refuse to comply with federal court orders: they
couldn't continue to hold the prisoners. So once you get to the
dueling injunction stage, I think federal courts must prevail. And to
return to the Alabama case, if a federal court orders Moore to remove
the monument, I don't think it matters what the Alabama supreme court
has said; the federal court is addressing him as a litigant and not
reversing any state court decision.
Quoting Mark Graber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> 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]
>
