Tag: Judicial Power and 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…

  • Jury Trial

    Trial By JuryThe Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law…

  • 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…

  • Enforcement of Federal Law

    Use of State Courts in Enforcement of Federal LawAlthough the states' rights proponents in the Convention and in the First Congress wished to leave to the state courts the enforcement of federal law and rights rather than to create inferior federal courts,<a name=t1 href=#f1 target="_self&q…

  • 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…

  • Rules of Accommodation

    Conflicts of Jurisdiction: Rules of AccommodationFederal courts primarily interfere with state courts in three ways: by enjoining proceedings in them, by issuing writs of habeas corpus to set aside convictions obtained in them, and by adjudicating cases removed from them. With regard to all three bu…

  • 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…

  • Comity

    ComityComity.-"[T]he notion of 'comity,' " Justice Black asserted, is composed of "a proper respect for state functions, a recognition of the fact that the entire country is made up of a Union of separate state governments, and a continuance of the belief that the Nati…

  • 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…