Introduction

Federal Question Jurisdiction

Introduction

Two passengers injured in a railway accident settled their claim in exchange for free passes for life, and years later the railroad stopped honoring the passes because Congress had outlawed free transportation. They sued in federal court, explaining in their complaint both that the railroad had broken its contract and that the new federal statute did not excuse the breach. Their case was dismissed, not because they were wrong about the contract or about the statute, but because the federal court had no power to hear the dispute at all.¹ The federal issue in that case was real, it was central, and everyone knew it was coming. None of that mattered, and understanding why is the work of this chapter.

The reason is that federal subject-matter jurisdiction comes from a statute, and the statute asks a narrower question than ordinary intuition expects. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1331, the district courts have original jurisdiction of all civil actions arising under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States.² Everything turns on the phrase arising under, which asks not whether federal law will figure in the litigation but whether federal law supplies the claim the plaintiff is bringing. That distinction sorts cases in a way that can feel arbitrary until you see where the court is told to look. It looks at the plaintiff's own properly pleaded claim, and nowhere else: a federal defense raised in the answer cannot create jurisdiction, and neither can a federal counterclaim.³

So the first analytical move is a drafting exercise rather than a prediction about how the case will unfold. Strip the complaint down to the elements the plaintiff must plead and prove, discard anything pleaded in anticipation of what the defendant will say, and ask whether what remains rests on federal law. The chapter takes that path in order. It begins with the arising-under grant itself and the gap between what Article III permits and what § 1331 delivers, then develops the well-pleaded complaint rule and its recurring traps, then turns to what counts as a claim arising under federal law — both the ordinary case where a federal statute creates the cause of action and the narrow one where a state-law claim embeds a federal ingredient. From there it separates a jurisdictional failure from a loss on the merits, a line that decides whether a weak federal claim is thrown out for want of power or defeated after the court has taken the case.⁴ The chapter closes with what happens when jurisdiction is missing, including the rule that a court must dismiss whenever it determines at any point that it lacks subject-matter jurisdiction.⁵ We start with the grant that makes all of this possible.