Federal Law in State Court: Judicial Federalism Through a Relational Lens

Enforcing federalism is most commonly thought to involve the search for a constitutional delegation of substantive power. Although in modern times the substantive power might be overlapping or shared authority, federalism enforcement proceeds from a determination about the site of substantive power. This conception of federalism enforcement preserves the Constitution’s commitment to fractionated authority by determining whether power is legitimately possessed. Thus we understand significant federalism disputes in our age as framed by whether Congress has the authority to enact comprehensive health care reform legislation, or whether Congress has exceeded its authority in reenacting the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance requirements. Federalism enforcement as allocation also underwrites much federal courts doctrine. We ask whether Congress has the authority to commandeer state courts, or whether states have the right to close their doors to federal claims. This Article challenges allocation as the exclusive method of federalism enforcement. By focusing on the issue of state court duties to federal claims, this Article * Associate Professor, University of Miami School of Law. J.D., Yale Law School. I would like to thank my Deans, Dennis Lynch, Paul Verkuil, and Patricia White for their generous support of my research. I would also like to thank colleagues at the University of Miami and Tulane Law School for their willingness to read and comment on this Article, especially, Anthony Alfieri, Mario Barnes, Sergio Campos, Kenneth Casebeer, Michael Froomkin, Patrick Gudridge, Osamudia James, Donald Jones, Kunal Parker, Stephen Schnably and Keith Werhan. I would also like to thank participants in the 2009 Federal Courts Junior Faculty Workshop, especially Martin Redish and David Shapiro for feedback. I would like to thank participants in the John Mercer Langston Writing Workshop at Southern Methodist Law School, especially, Leonard Baynes, Henry Chambers, Mitchell Crusto, Darren Hutchinson, and Terry Smith, for their very helpful criticism of the piece. I would like to thank other very generous federal courts scholars for providing me with extraordinarily helpful comments, criticisms and suggestions; they include, Susan Bandes, John Collins, Scott Dodson, Even Tsen Lee, Caprice Roberts and Jamelle Sharpe. I owe a special thanks to both Bernadette Atuahene and Gera Peoples for talking through these issues with me during the writing of this paper. This article could not have been completed without the tremendous research assistance of both Patrick McCardle and Andrew Leedom, and the technical assistance of Rosa Lopez. I also extend my sincere thanks to my editor Joy Einstein for her excellent work. I dedicate this article to my parents.