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2024 Regent Univ. L. Rev. Pro Tempore [1] (2024)

handle is hein.journals/regunlwre2024 and id is 1 raw text is: 2024 Regent University Law Review Pro Tempore No. 1 FULL FAITH AND CREDIT TO JUDGMENTS: NOW AND THEN-AND NOW By Craig A. Stern* If anything is clear about the full faith and credit owed to the judgments of state courts, it is that by statute, other courts in the United States must give the same full faith and credit to those judgments as that given by the law of the state whose court granted the judgment.1 And if the statute alone were not clear enough, the United States Supreme Court has left no doubt on the matter.2 But the Supreme Court has also left no doubt that uniform federal law, not state law, sometimes determines the measure of full faith and credit to be given the judgments of state courts.3 The Supreme Court has not explained how these two sets of rules coexist. That is the burden of this essay. I. STATE LAW MEASURES FULL FAITH AND CREDIT The United States Constitution provides: Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State; And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.4 What full faith and credit this provision requires by itself has been the subject of sharp dispute.5 Beyond dispute, however, has been the authority of Congress to enact 28 U.S.C. § 1738 and its predecessors and thereby specify the degree of full faith and credit to be Senior Lecturer, Regent University School of Law; B.A., Yale University; J.D., University of Virginia. 1 28 U.S.C. § 1738. 2 See, e.g., Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Epstein, 516 U.S. 367, 369 (1996) (This case presents the question whether a federal court may withhold full faith and credit from a state-court judgment approving a class-action settlement simply because the settlement releases claims within the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal courts. The answer is no.); Marrese v. Am. Acad. of Orthopaedic Surgeons, 470 U.S. 373, 375 (1985) (reversing a lower court's decision not to afford full faith and credit to a state court decision). 3 See, e.g., Durfee v. Duke, 375 U.S. 106, 116 (1963) (holding that a federal court sitting in Missouri must give credit to the determination of a Nebraska state court that the jurisdictional issues had been fully and fairly litigated by the parties and finally determined). 4 U.S. CONST. art. IV, § 1. 5 See, e.g., Sun Oil Co. v. Wortman, 486 U.S. 717 (1988); David E. Engdahl, The Classic Rule of Faith and Credit, 118 YALE L. J. 1584 (2009); Stephen E. Sachs, Full Faith and Credit in the Early Congress, 95 VA. L. REV. 1201 (2009); Jeffrey L. Rensberger, Same- Sex Marriages and the Defense of Marriage Act: A Deviant View of an Experiment in Full Faith and Credit, 32 CREIGHTON L. REV. 409 (1998); Ralph U. Whitten, The Original Understanding of the Full Faith and Credit Clause and the Defense of Marriage Act, 32 CREIGHTON L. REV. 255 (1998); Larry Kramer, Same-Sex Marriage, Conflict of Laws, and the Unconstitutional Public Policy Exception, 106 YALE L. J. 1965 (1997).