What standing does one state have to determine if another state(s)&#39; implementation of their own constitution violates the federal constitution? Background Various media outlets have been reporting on the notoriety and expansiveness of State of Texas vs. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, etc.. This lawsuit alleges the following: • Non-legislative actors’ purported amendments to States’ duly enacted election laws, in violation of the Electors Clause’s vesting State legislatures with plenary authority regarding the appointment of presidential electors. • Intrastate differences in the treatment of voters, with more favorable allotted to voters – whether lawful or unlawful – in areas administered by local government under Democrat control and with populations with higher ratios of Democrat voters than other areas of Defendant States. • The appearance of voting irregularities in the Defendant States that would be consistent with the unconstitutional relaxation of ballot-integrity protections in those States' election laws Issue While the Supreme Court does have original jurisdiction over suits between two or more states, this suit seems to state that the way other states allegedly failed to follow their own state law in turn led to these states not following federal law. There do exist cases where the Supreme Court invalidates certain state laws, but I do not see a successful case where a state invalidates another state's law on the basis of the other state's law violating the U.S. constitution. Rather the cases I cited with two or more states seem to be with contractual disputes as opposed to one state saying that another state's law is wrong. This leads me to question... Question Can one state appeal a suit to the supreme court about the validity of a different states' state law in relation to the federal constitution?
The direct answer is &quot;no&quot; and the indirect answer is &quot;yes&quot;, that is, your way of putting the matter diverges significantly from how the Bill of Complain puts the matter. The claim is that the defendant states violated the Electors Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, and the Due Process Clause. Texas claims that there is an injury in fact, citing various SCOTUS rulings e.g. Wesberry v. Sanders which says that No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live. Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined See the argument in the brief for more legal rhetoric. There can be no question that one state can sue another; equally clearly, the plaintiff must show actual harm and not just annoyance. New Jersey v. New York is a case involving a question of equity, not the federal constitution, but there is no legal principle to the effect that one state cannot sue over a constitutional harm rather than an equitable harm. See the brief p. 65 ff. The court does not require that there be exact precedential analogs (otherwise, Roe v. Wade would have turned out differently), what's required is simply that there be reasonable logical steps: SCOTUS gets to decide what is reasonable (or it can decline to decide).
No. As a superior sovereign, the United States can sue states in federal court without restriction. I’m not sure if that would apply in state court, but the federal government doesn’t generally file cases in state court to begin with. States can also sue each other in federal court, having waived their immunity to lawsuits brought by other states when they agreed to Article III of the Constitution (although Congress has said that these lawsuits must be filed directly in the Supreme Court).
Federal facilities are required to adhere to the flag code. Non-federal governmental entities are not, and the explanation is more complicated. In theory, the federal government should have very little power over the decision-making of state governments -- this is a principle of federalism and is expressly stated in the 10th Amendment. In practice, however, the federal government has a lot of power over state governments. Congress can condition the allotment of federal monies to states, i.e. block grants, as long as such a condition meets the five point test spelled out in South Dakota v. Dole. The most stringent of these points is that the condition "must not be coercive" so as to apply "irresistible pressure", creating a false choice where accepting money is the only realistic option (thus complying with the conditions). I couldn't find a clause within USC Title 4, Chapter 1 for withholding funds from states in the event of noncompliance, similar to one that exists for the national drinking age. Therefore states (state, county, municipal all treated as an extension of state power under the US Constitution) are not required to to adhere to the flag code. Theoretically, Congress could pass a new law that would condition the receipt of some federal funds on the states' compliance with the flag code. But the new low could face additional hurdles, since the condition must be "directly related to one of the main purposes for which... [the funds] are expended" (quoting from Dole). This restriction is the reason why states were given the right to opt out of the Obamacare medicare expansion without losing their pre-existing Medicaid funding (567 U. S. ____ (2012) at 51), and is also the reason why the recent "Sanctuary Cities Ban" is having legal trouble. It would be unlikely that any law like this would hold up. It's also worth noting that most states have their own flag law, which makes this whole discussion of the federal law's effect on state facilities. As you noted, since US v. Eichman, all criminal penalties for violating any flag code have been unenforceable against individuals. My best guess is that the proper method of enforcement in federal buildings is simply administrative action, since violating the code can provide cause for firing federal employees under Chapter 75 of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978.
Diversity of citizenship concerns parties to an action. In the given circumstances, Party B is a witness, not a party. That is, whether A sues C or vice versa, neither would name B as a defendant. The determination of diversity jurisdiction occurs in the initial stages of the suit. Because A and C are citizens of the same state, there is no diversity of citizenship. Similarly, if Bob and Alice sign a contract when they live in different states, but then one moves to the other's state, and then a controversy arises under the contract, there is no diversity of citizenship. For reference, 28 USC 1332(a): (a) The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of all civil actions where the matter in controversy exceeds the sum or value of $75,000, exclusive of interest and costs, and is between— (1) citizens of different States; (2) citizens of a State and citizens or subjects of a foreign state, except that the district courts shall not have original jurisdiction under this subsection of an action between citizens of a State and citizens or subjects of a foreign state who are lawfully admitted for permanent residence in the United States and are domiciled in the same State; (3) citizens of different States and in which citizens or subjects of a foreign state are additional parties; and (4) a foreign state, defined in section 1603(a) of this title, as plaintiff and citizens of a State or of different States.
Every court in the United States from municipal traffic court to a state court to a U.S. District Court has both the right and the obligation to consider claims of unconstitutionality just like any other legal question that a case presents. Contrary to popular misconception, constitutional law issues are not the exclusive province of the U.S. Supreme Court. Indeed, constitutional issues are only ruled upon in the first instance in the U.S. Supreme Court (or even in a direct appeal from a trial court to the U.S. Supreme Court) in rare and isolated cases. Usually, at least one trial court judge and at least three appellate court judges, and often more appellate court judges, have ruled upon a constitutional issue before the U.S. Supreme Court considers it. This is just as true in Louisiana and Puerto Rico, which have legal systems based upon the civil law legal system, as it is in other U.S. jurisdictions, which have a common law legal system. There is usually only one difference between a case in which the constitutionality of a statute is called into question and one in which it is not. When the constitutionality of a statute is called into question, many state and federal rules of civil procedure require or permit the attorney general of the state whose statute's constitutionality (or the U.S. attorney general when a federal law's constitutionality is at issue) to be joined as a party for the purpose of litigating that issue. This allows the court to receive arguments on the constitutional issue from the public's perspective as well as the perspectives of the parties. A few states also provide that appeals from trial court decisions finding that a statute is unconstitutional are directly to the state supreme court, rather than to the intermediate court of appeals as they would usually be in those states. Notably, the distinct treatment of constitutional issues in many civil law systems is not inherently a part of the civil law system. Constitutional courts are mostly a post-World War II constitutional innovation in the countries where they are found. For example, the &quot;law-screen&quot; doctrine and the existence of a constitutional court in France, is much younger than core of the rest of the civil law system in France, which invented the civil law system in its modern form more than two hundred years ago. Neither France, at the time Louisiana adopted its civil law legal system through the time of the Louisiana Purchase, nor Spain at the time that Puerto Rico was ceded to the United States after the Spanish-American war, had constitutional courts. Footnote Regarding Treaties Also, it is worth remarking that in Europe and much of the rest of the world, the function of protecting individual rights against government authority in a way that is entrenched so that it is not easily overcome by domestic legislation of a current political regime is accomplished through international treaties, rather than only through entrenched rights in a constitution as they are in the United States. Although even then, in many European countries, ordinary courts apply only domestic law and the country in question has to adopt domestic law to conform to the treaties. This treaty mechanism is not very effective in the U.S., because in the U.S., unlike most countries, an ordinary domestic law can override an earlier adopted and ratified international treaty.
This depends on how far along you're waiting for court rulings to set in, and if you count laws of Congress passed under the 13th amendment's enforcement clause. There were quite a lot of things that got ruled as violations of the 13th and 14th amendments (mostly the 14th), but many were not ruled or legislated that way for decades. Some were even ruled to have an essentially opposite effect of what the current (overturning) precedents do. "Separate but equal" was challenged on 13th amendment grounds, but was upheld in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), and wasn't overturned, on 14th amendment grounds, until 58 years later in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Your particular situation sounds like peonage, which was outlawed by Congress in 1867 via the enforcement clause. This law specifically banned "the voluntary or involuntary service or labor of any persons as peons, in liquidation of any debt or obligation, or otherwise." However, peonage cases continued to make their way into the courts for more than 40 years thereafter, such as Clyatt v. United States (1905)&mdash; which ruled that peonage was involuntary servitude&mdash; and Bailey v. Alabama (1911). These cases affirmed that the 13th amendment abolished not just chattel slavery but essentially all forms of involuntary or indentured servitude (except as punishment for a crime). Though exactly what qualifies as "involuntary servitude" is still something courts decide on a case-by-case basis; the draft doesn't, nor does mandatory community service to graduate high school.
No. There is only one U.S. Supreme Court case mentioning the 25th Amendment at all, Lubin v. Panish, 415 U.S. 709, 713 (1974), and it only does so in passing, as part of a discussion of changing trends in ballot access law, citing it as evidence of "an enlarged demand for an expansion of political opportunity." Although none of them do much to actually interpret it, either, there are a few circuit-court opinions citing the 25th Amendment: Chula Vista Citizens for Jobs &amp; Fair Competition v. Norris, 782 F.3d 520, 529 (9th Cir. 2015); Wilson-Jones v. Caviness, 99 F.3d 203, 208 (6th Cir. 1996); Estate of Rockefeller v. Comm'r, 762 F.2d 264, 271 (2d Cir. 1985).
The US Supreme Court only has jurisdiction in federal matters. So if someone is suing under federal law, or there is a constitutional question, the Supreme Court is the place to go for a definitive answer. However, states have their own laws. The Supreme Court cannot tell New York that it must apply the attractive nuisance doctrine, as it is neither a matter of federal law nor a constitutional matter. New York is free to make its own laws on the subject, and the New York courts are free to interpret those laws as they see fit. In fact, federal courts are required to defer to New York's interpretation if New York's laws apply to the case, even if the case is in federal court for some reason (like diversity of parties.) See the Erie doctrine (which, coincidentally, involves yet another case about railroad injuries.)