5/30/2023 0 Comments Full faith and credit clauseOnce a court has made a decision, though, the Clause has real teeth. ![]() Shutts (1985), depending on where the case is filed, either court can apply its own state’s law to the dispute-so long as that state has “a significant contact or significant aggregation of contacts, creating state interests, such that choice of its law is neither arbitrary nor fundamentally unfair.” Under the prevailing standard in Allstate Insurance Co. In situations where either state’s laws could plausibly apply (say, a car accident in Florida between two residents of New York, where the two states have different ideas about how to parcel out damages), the Clause exerts relatively little force. As the Supreme Court has recognized, when two states’ laws are in conflict, it’s impossible for both of them to give effect to each other’s law at the same time. The Clause and federal implementing statute also have a relatively light impact on state statutory law. ![]() (A fishing license from one state doesn’t give you the right to fish anywhere else.) States will take note of each other’s public records, but they aren’t always expected to give these records precisely the same effect that they have at home. These broad statements of principle don’t always translate well to specifics. § 1738, declares that these materials should receive “the same full faith and credit” in each state that they have in the state “from which they are taken.” The current implementing statute, 28 U.S.C. ![]() The second sentence lets Congress decide how those materials can be proved in court and what effect they will have. The first part of the Clause, largely borrowed from the Articles of Confederation, requires each state to pay attention to the other states’ statutes, public records, and court decisions. Article IV addresses something different: the states’ relations with each other, sometimes called “horizontal federalism.” Its first section, the Full Faith and Credit Clause, requires every state, as part of a single nation, to give a certain measure of respect to every other state’s laws and institutions. Most of the original Constitution focuses on creating the federal government, defining its relationship to the states and the people at large.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |