From the Mind of Abouna: TUESDAY LESSONS IN CIVICS-#18

LESSONS IN CIVICS & THE CONSTITUTION – M:

Part A:

Erie Railroad v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64 (1938)

The Supreme Court, in its decision of the case of Erie Railroad v. Tompkins, in 1938, overturned the Swift v. Tyson decision of 1842 by stating: In the Erie case, Justice Brandeis wrote: “Except in matters governed by the Federal Constitution or by acts of Congress, the law to be applied in any case is the Law of the State . . . There is no Federal General Common Law.” Take note of the exception. The court has excepted matters governed by the constitution and acts of congress from being governed by State Law. Judge Henry J. Friendly of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit gave the following insights into the significance of this decision:

“The clarion yet careful pronouncement of Erie, ‘There is no Federal General Common Law’ opened the way to what, for want of a better term, we may call Specialized Common Law. I doubt that we sufficiently realize how far this development has gone – let alone where it is likely to go.” “Since most cases relating to Federal matters were in the Federal courts and involved ‘general’ law, the familiar rule of Swift v. Tyson usually gave Federal judges all the freedom they required in pre-Erie days and made it unnecessary for them to consider a more esoteric source of power . . . By focusing attention on the nature of the right being enforced, Erie caused the principle of a specialized Federal Common Law, binding in all courts because of its source, to develop within a quarter century into a powerful unifying force.”

Just as Federal do not conform to State decisions on issues of property for the States, State Courts must conform to federal decisions in areas where Congress, acting within powers granted to it, has manifested, be it ever so lightly, an intention to that end. “The Lincoln Mills doctrine (353 U.S. 448) 1957, is pregnant with possibilities. If the grant of Federal jurisdiction in suits on labor contracts affecting commerce was a mandate to fashion a Federal Common Law consistent with federal labor legislation . . . this like the Federal Common Law of labor would have supremacy over State Law.”

Professor Gilmore wrote: “The Federal giant is just beginning to stir with his long-delayed entrance we are, it may be, at last catching sight of the principle character.”

QUESTION: What, do you suppose, is the nature of the right, and what is the source Judge Friendly is referring to, that caused the Erie Court to over turn the Swift v. Tyson decision and rule that there is no longer a General Federal Common Law?

QUESTION: Who or what, is the “principle character” that Professor Gilmore refers?

Remember, Justice Story said in the DeLovio case that the jurisdiction of Admiralty, as to contracts, depends upon the subject matter and the nature of the cause! In a book entitled “The Law of Bills, Notes, and Cheques”, Melville M. Bigalow, who has a Ph. D. from Harvard, said in 1900: “We are concerned in this book with a branch which deals with the law of bills, notes, and cheques. This branch of the law merchant has retained throughout its life, to the present day, its essential characteristics, clearly marking it off from the Common Law . . . The term Law Merchant at the present time usually suggests the law of bills, notes, and cheques. The time came when it must take its place, even if piecemeal by the side of the Common Law, and of Admiralty and Equity, in the jurisprudence of England. Admiralty had already been exercising jurisdiction over instruments in the nature of bills of exchange and promissory notes pertaining to contracts in the commerce of the high seas. The Law Merchant is not even a modification of the Common Law; it occupies a field over which the Common Law does not and never did extend.”

And, from the “Handbook of the Law of Federal Courts” states that in the case of Clearfield Trust Co. v. United States, 1943, 63 S. Ct. 573, the court held that: “The rights and duties of the United States on commercial paper that is of issue are governed by Federal rather than local law. This does not mean that in choosing the applicable Federal rule the courts may not occasionally select State law. But it was thought that such a course would be singularly inappropriate in the Clearfield case. The issuance of commercial paper by the United States is on a vast scale and transactions in that paper from issuance to payment will commonly occur in several States . . . The desirability of a uniform rule is plain.

Next Week, September 25^th, I will post part B of Erie Railroad v. Tompkins