State Courts and Federal Law

State Courts and Federal Law

The preceding sections asked which federal courts may hear a case and which cases the federal judicial power reaches. Those questions can suggest that federal law is applied only in federal court. In practice a defendant prosecuted by a State will often answer with a federal defense, and the state court hearing the prosecution must then apply federal law. State courts are therefore part of the machinery through which federal law operates. The Constitution addresses them in three ways, which this section takes in turn: it binds state judges to federal law, it lets the Supreme Court review what they decide on federal questions, and it permits Congress to assign them duties that it may not assign to the rest of state government.

Judges Bound by Federal Law

Article VI declares that the Constitution, the federal laws made in pursuance of it, and treaties made under federal authority are "the supreme Law of the Land," and that "the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."¹ The closing phrase answers the question a state judge faces when state and federal rules collide: the federal rule governs and the state rule gives way. The same article requires state legislators and executive and judicial officers to take an oath to support the Constitution.² In Cooper v. Aaron the Court drew the consequence for state officers, holding that none of them may act against the Constitution without breaching that undertaking.³

The command is addressed to judges for a structural reason. In Martin v. Hunter's Lessee the Court reasoned that the Constitution contemplated cases within the federal judicial power arising in state courts in the exercise of their ordinary jurisdiction, and that Article VI was written to meet that situation, so that state judges must decide according to the Constitution and laws of the United States as well as state law.⁴ A defendant prosecuted in a state court did not choose that forum. If the judge there could prefer state law, a federal limit on state power would bind only when state officials agreed to honor it. The need was also practical. Congress did not confer general federal-question jurisdiction on the lower federal courts until 1875, and before then the work of applying federal law in such cases fell largely to state judges, who were bound by the Supremacy Clause to carry it out.⁵

Martin supplied a criminal illustration of the point: a criminal indictment may be defended as an ex post facto law, and the state court must then hear and determine that federal question.⁶ The ban on retroactive punishment is a federal limit on legislative power, yet the first judge to meet the argument is the state trial judge presiding over the prosecution, and that judge must resolve it as part of the case. The line that matters is the one between cases that raise a federal question and cases that do not.

Students lose this issue when they assume that a case raising a federal defense must be heard in federal court alone.⁷ The state court has the case, and the federal question comes with it.

A state judge's duty to apply federal law when a case presents it differs from a state court's duty to open its doors to federal claims at all, and the second duty has its own limit. In Testa v. Katt a Rhode Island court refused to enforce a federal treble-damages claim on the ground that it was a foreign penal law, and the Supreme Court answered that the claim might be penal but was not foreign, because federal law and policy are local law and policy in every State.⁸ A state court therefore cannot refuse a federal claim without a "valid excuse," and a valid excuse is a jurisdictional limit that applies equally to comparable local claims, while contrary state substantive policy never qualifies.⁹ A traffic court of limited jurisdiction, for instance, need not hear a federal claim that it would refuse to hear if the claim arose under state law.¹⁰

The command to state judges also reaches only law that is supreme. The Supremacy Clause makes supreme only those federal acts that accord with the constitutional design, so a state judge is not bound by a federal statute that exceeds Congress's enumerated powers.¹¹ Treaties supply a second limit. In Medellín v. Texas a Mexican national sentenced to death in Texas relied on an International Court of Justice judgment ordering review of his conviction, and the Court distinguished self-executing treaties, which operate as domestic law of their own force, from non-self-executing ones, which can be enforced only through implementing legislation.¹² The judgment was held not to be directly enforceable domestic law, so Texas's limits on successive habeas applications stayed in force.¹³

Supreme Court Review

Because state courts decide federal questions, the Supreme Court's appellate power must reach what they decide. Martin arose when the Virginia Court of Appeals refused to obey a Supreme Court mandate, declaring that the Supreme Court's appellate power did not extend to it and that the section of the Judiciary Act authorizing such review was not in pursuance of the Constitution.¹⁵ Justice Story rejected that position on structural grounds. If appellate review were limited to cases pending in federal courts, federal jurisdiction over the enumerated classes would be exclusive of state tribunals, and any such case a state court did entertain would escape review, contrary to the manifest intent that the judicial power extend to all of them.¹⁶ Conversely, if Congress could decline to create lower federal courts, the Supreme Court's appellate jurisdiction would have nothing to act upon unless it could reach cases pending in state courts.¹⁷ Story summed up the principle in the words "It is the case, and not the court, that gives the jurisdiction."¹⁸

The reason for the rule can be read off the alternative. If each State's highest court had the last word on federal questions, federal law could mean different things in different States, and a hostile state court could nullify it. Story answered the worry about abuse directly: every final authority can be abused, and the Constitution has to place the final decision somewhere.¹⁹ Uniform interpretation and application of federal law throughout the country was the reason for making state courts answerable to the Supreme Court on federal issues.²⁰ Even a dissent in Ex parte Young, which resisted federal-court interference with state prosecutions, assumed that state courts must enforce federal rights and that the remedy for their error is review by the Supreme Court.²¹ A dissent in Stone v. Powell defended federal habeas review of state convictions on the same footing, arguing that federal courts should have the last say on federal questions and that popularly elected state judges face pressures that life-tenured federal judges do not.²²

The same reasoning reaches criminal cases. In Cohens v. Virginia the State prosecuted people who sold lottery tickets in violation of state law, and the defendants answered that a federal statute authorizing a lottery in the District of Columbia protected them. Chief Justice Marshall held that the federal act did not protect them but, in deciding so, asserted the Supreme Court's authority to review state criminal proceedings.²³ The Court also held the Eleventh Amendment inapplicable because the State itself had instituted the case.²⁴ That result matches what the preceding section drew from the Amendment's text: a State prosecuting under its penal code appears as the party bringing the case, so the bar on suits against a State has no application.

Review follows the reach of the federal judicial power, which Article III extends to cases arising under the Constitution, laws, and treaties.²⁵ A state judgment resting entirely on state law, like the burglary conviction in the first hypothetical, presents nothing within the federal judicial power for the Supreme Court to review. Mixed cases follow the same logic. When a state court rests its decision on a state constitutional provision that gives the individual broader protection than the Federal Constitution, the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction to review, because States may protect individuals more than the Federal Constitution does but may not protect them less.²⁶ Students lose this issue when they assume the Supreme Court may review any state criminal judgment it dislikes, since the federal question is what supplies the jurisdiction.

Judges Versus Executives

Binding state judges to federal law does not mean Congress may command the rest of state government. In Printz v. United States the Court held that the Brady Act could not force state and local law enforcement officers to perform background checks on prospective handgun owners, because the provision compelled state officials to administer a federal regulatory program.²⁸ The decision leaves room for voluntary state participation, and Congress remains free to continue the program on a contractual basis or by conditioning federal funds.²⁹ The Supremacy Clause therefore binds state judges, not state executives, to carry out federal commands.

The early statutes show where the line was drawn in practice. The first Congresses imposed obligations on state courts to enforce federal prescriptions in matters appropriate for the judicial power, yet they left almost no statutes imposing duties on state executives, and that contrast suggests Congress assumed it lacked such power.³⁰ When the First Congress wanted state jails to hold federal prisoners, it issued a recommendation to the state legislatures rather than a command, and when Georgia refused, its only response was to authorize the marshal to rent a temporary jail.³¹ The one early statute directed at state executives, the Extradition Act of 1793, implemented the Extradition Clause of the Constitution itself and so rested on a particularized constitutional authorization.³²

Courts were treated differently for a reason rooted in what judges do. Unlike legislatures and executives, courts apply the law of other sovereigns all the time: the principle behind transitory causes of action is that law operating elsewhere creates obligations that the forum State's courts will enforce, and the Full Faith and Credit Clause generally requires such enforcement for obligations arising in other States.³³ A state judge asked to enforce a federal claim does what judges already do with sister-state law, which is to decide a dispute under a rule whose source lies elsewhere. A state sheriff ordered to run federal background checks decides nothing. The sheriff is carrying out another government's program with state personnel.

The court-specific power has its own boundary. Congress may require state courts of adequate and appropriate jurisdiction to enforce federal prescriptions that relate to matters appropriate for the judicial power, though it may not require the legislative or executive branches of a State to enact or administer federal regulatory programs.³⁴ In Alden v. Maine the Court found no constitutional basis for requiring state courts to entertain suits that could not be heard in federal court because they fall outside the judicial power, such as private suits against nonconsenting States.³⁵ That limit connects this section to the preceding one: the duty of state courts to hear federal claims is measured by the federal judicial power itself.