Tag: Grants of Jurisdiction
-
Judicial Review
The Establishment of Judicial ReviewJudicial review is one of the distinctive features of United States constitutional law. It is no small wonder, then, to find that the power of the federal courts to test federal and state legislative enactments and other actions by the standards of what the Consti…
-
Immunity of the United States
Immunity of the United States From SuitPursuant to the general rule that a sovereign cannot be sued in its own courts, the judicial power does not extend to suits against the United States unless Congress by statute consents to such suits. This rule first emanated in embryonic form in an obiter dict…
-
Diversity Cases
The Law Applied in Diversity CasesBy virtue of § 34 of the Judiciary Act of 1789,1 state law expressed in constitutional and statutory form was regularly applied in federal courts in diversity actions to govern the disposition of such cases. But…
-
Removal from State Court
Removal From State Court to Federal CourtA limited right to "remove" certain cases from state courts to federal courts was granted to defendants in the Judiciary Act of 1789,1 and from then to 1872 Congress enacted several specific removal …
-
Suits Against Officials
Suits Against United States OfficialsUnited States v. Lee, a 5-to-4 decision, qualified earlier holdings that a judgment affecting the property of the United States was in effect against the United States, by ruling that title to the Arlington estate of the Lee family, then being used as a national …
-
Land Controversies
Controversies Between Citizens of the Same State Claiming Land Under Grants of Different StatesThe genesis of this clause was in the report of the Committee of Detail which vested the power to resolve such land disputes in the Senate,1 but this propo…
-
Corporations Chartered by Congress
Corporations Chartered by CongressIn Osborn v. Bank of the United States,1 Chief Justice Marshall seized upon the authorization for the Bank to sue and be sued as a grant by Congress to the federal courts of jurisdiction in all cases to which the ban…
-
Suits Against Government Corporations
Suits Against Government CorporationsThe multiplication of government corporations during periods of war and depression has provided one motivation for limiting the doctrine of sovereign immunity. In Keifer & Keifer v. RFC,1 the Court held that the g…
-
Controversies
Controversies Between a State, or the Citizens Thereof, and Foreign States, Citizens, or SubjectsThe scope of this jurisdiction has been limited both by judicial decisions and the Eleventh Amendment. By judicial application of the law of nations, a foreign state is immune from suit in the federal co…
-
Special Jurisdictional Grants
Federal Questions Resulting from Special Jurisdictional GrantsIn the Labor-Management Relations Act of 1947, Congress authorized federal courts to entertain suits for violation of collective bargaining agreements without respect to the amount in controversy or the citizenship of the parties.<a name=…
-
Suits Between Two or More States
Suits Between Two or More StatesThe extension of federal judicial power to controversies between states and the vesting of original jurisdiction in the Supreme Court of suits to which a state is a party had its origin in experience. Prior to independence, disputes between colonies claiming charter r…
-
Foreign States
Suits by Foreign StatesThe privilege of a recognized foreign state to sue in the courts of another state upon the principle of comity is recognized by both international law and American constitutional law.1 To deny a sovereign this privilege "w…
-
Civil Rights Act Jurisdiction
Civil Rights Act JurisdictionPerhaps the most important of the special federal question jurisdictional statutes is that conferring jurisdiction on federal district courts to hear suits challenging the deprivation under color of state law or custom of any right, privilege, or immunity secured by the …
-
Boundary Disputes
Boundary Disputes: The Law AppliedOf the earlier examples of suits between states, that between New Jersey and New York 1 is significant for the application of the rule laid down earlier in Chisholm v. Georgia that the Supreme Court may proceed ex pa…
-
Narrow Construction of the Jurisdiction
Narrow Construction of the JurisdictionAs in cases of diversity jurisdiction, suits brought to the federal courts under this category must clearly state in the record the nature of the parties. As early as 1809, the Supreme Court ruled that a federal court could not take jurisdiction of a cause wher…