Suits between States
Legal disputes between states present a politically sensitive problem. Since the founding of the United States, the persistent tendency to analogize states to sovereign nations has raised four questions of special importance and difficulty with respect to interstate suits: (1) whether one state can force another state into court without the latter’s consent; (2) if so, what court can hear the dispute; (3) what law applies to the legal issues raised in the case; and (4) how judgments rendered against states in such suits will be enforced.
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CAN STATES BE SUED BY OTHER STATES?
Traditionally, the idea that sovereign nations have equal dignity has been thought to preclude one nation’s suing another without the latter’s consent. Historically, of course, the alternative means for resolving international disputes have ranged widely from diplomacy to armed conflict.
Notwithstanding comparisons of states to nations, a different approach was clearly needed to resolve disputes between states that are, themselves, part of a single country; a federal union such as the United States requires some reliable and peaceful mechanism for the orderly resolution of conflict among its constituent parts. Accordingly, as the U.S. Supreme Court observed in Alden v. Maine (1999), “In ratifying the Constitution, the States consented to suits brought by other States or by the Federal Government.” Importantly, this “consent” is nowhere explicit in the constitutional text. Moreover, ratification of the Constitution is not understood to have implied consent to suits against states by individuals. Nevertheless, the inference that states have consented to having disputes with other states resolved in a court of law is an accepted political assumption about the constitutional structure of the country—an assumption thought necessary for a stable federal system.
WHAT COURT CAN HEAR SUITS BETWEEN STATES?
The Constitution does directly address an important part of the second question: what court can decide controversies between states? Article III, Section 2, identifies various types of “cases” and “controversies” that together define the extent of the “judicial Power of the United States.” Included are “Controversies between two or more States.” Moreover, that section of the Constitution specifically assigns cases “in which a State shall be a Party” to the original jurisdiction of the U.S. Supreme Court; that is, such cases may be filed directly in the Supreme Court, rather than reach that court on appeal from one of the inferior national courts.
| ARTICLE III, SECTION 2, CLAUSE 1 |
|---|
| The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;—to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;—to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;—to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;—to Controversies between two or more States;—between a State and Citizens of another State;—between Citizens of different States,—between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects. |
The purpose for this assignment seems especially clear in the context of suits between states: as Alexander Hamilton argued in The Federalist Papers, the courts of the individual disputing states are not feasible forums for settling disputes between those states; a national court, by contrast, offers a neutral forum for this purpose. Moreover, if states are to be treated with the dignity of quasi-sovereigns, then the court adjudicating their disputes should be one that is itself an institution possessing great dignity, and the U.S. Supreme Court is such a court. To emphasize this latter point, the federal statutes that regulate the jurisdiction of the various national courts provide that the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction over “all controversies between two or more states” shall be not only “original,” as specified in the Constitution, but also “exclusive.” In other words, not only is a forum within the national judicial system provided for legal disputes between states, but also such cases can be heard only in the highest court of that system. (Another reason for excluding lower federal courts from hearing interstate suits is the likelihood that the judges will be citizens of one or the other of the disputing states, thus raising the same problem of bias that would be present if the litigation took place in a state court.)
Even so, it should be noted that reflecting the delicate issues of federalism inherent in litigation between states, the Supreme Court reserves the authority to refuse to adjudicate such suits. In Texas v. New Mexico (1983), the Court made clear that it interprets the statute regulating its jurisdiction to decide interstate cases as “providing us with substantial discretion to make case-by-case judgments as to the practical necessity of an original forum in this Court for particular disputes within our constitutional original jurisdiction. . . . We exercise that discretion with an eye to promoting the most effective functioning of the Court within the overall federal system.”
WHAT LAW APPLIES TO SUITS BETWEEN STATES?
Boundary disputes have been the most litigated interstate cases in that Court, followed by disputes involving interstate waterways, interstate compacts, debts, and sundry other matters. The question of what law to apply in resolving these interstate disputes has raised problems similar to those surrounding the question of the proper forum. In the United States, each state creates its own law, reflecting the public policies of that individual state. In light of the parochialism thus reflected in the laws of each disputing state, neither body of law would seem appropriate for resolving an interstate dispute. Moreover, the legal principles that an individual state would use to decide an internal dispute in that state might not be well adapted for resolving a dispute between states. Therefore, the Supreme Court has used its constitutional authority to hear controversies between states to fashion federal common law to apply to the legal issues raised in interstate litigation.
HOW ARE JUDGMENTS IN INTERSTATE SUITS ENFORCED?
Perhaps the most sensitive of the issues surrounding suits between states is that of enforcing judgments rendered in such suits. Like other courts, the U.S. Supreme Court has the authority to issue orders requiring disputing parties to comply with the final judgment in a case. Nonetheless, the Court has tended to withhold enforcement orders and instead to rely more than usual on voluntary compliance by the parties with its judgments. In this way, the Court reduces the likelihood of escalating tension either between the disputing states or between the states and the Supreme Court.
| BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Erwin Chemerinsky, Federal Jurisdiction (Gaithersburg, MD: Aspen Publishers, 2003); Richard H. Fallon Jr., Daniel J. Meltzer, and David L. Shapiro, Hart and Wechsler’s The Federal Courts and the Federal System, 5th ed. (New York: Foundation Press, 2003); and Charles Alan Wright and Mary Kay Kane, Law of the Federal Courts, 6th ed. (St. Paul, MN: West Group, 2002). |
Richard K. Greenstein
Last Updated: 2006
SEE ALSO: Interstate Compacts; Interstate Relations; Supreme Court of the United States