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Federal law is the body oflaw created by thefederal government of a country. A federal government is formed when a country has a central government as well as regional governments, such assubnational states orprovinces, each with constitutionally entrenched powers. As a result, two or more levels of governments with constitutional powers exist within an established geographic territory. The body of law of the common central government is the federal law.
Examples of federal governments include those ofAustralia,Brazil,Canada,Germany,Malaysia,Pakistan,India,Russia, the formerSoviet Union and theUnited States.
TheUnited States Constitution established through thesupremacy clause that the United States Constitution and federal law take precedence over state law. These powers include the authority to governinternational affairs,interstate commerce, thecurrency andnational defense. After theAmerican Civil War, theFourteenth Amendment applied the Constitution'sBill of Rights to state governments. Legislation passed byCongress, anexecutive order of thePresident, or a decision offederal courts pursuant to the Constitution is federal law.
Through the system of checks and balances, it is theSupreme Court that makes final decisions regardingfederal laws regarding specific cases brought before them.McCulloch v. Maryland was a seminal case handed down by the Supreme Court in 1819 that prevented State legislatures from taxing federal institutions. This established the superior relationship that federal laws have with regard to conflicting State laws and was a critical moment forfederalism in the United States. Federal laws arecodified in theUnited States Code.
Professor Scott Dodson proposes a theory that argues that American federal law has some measurable effect on state law and compares this effect to a gravitational force that while not "inexorable", influences state actors to create legislature in accordance with or at least closely aligned with federal legislature. Dodson justifies the existence of this "pull" by arguing that state legislators and courts rarely exercise their constitutional power to deviate from Federal Law despite having the capability. He cited, among other supreme case decisions and legislative acts, theFederal Rules of Civil Procedure as being responsible for ushering, "in a new era of federal procedural uniformity" in 1938.[1]
Dodson points to the 1957Conley v. Gibson Supreme Court decision as additional contextualization for his argument. This case was brought as a class-action lawsuit by a group of African American rail workers to aFederal District Court in Texas and stating that "their collective bargaining agent be compelled to represent them fairly" in accordance with theRailway Labor Act. The suit was initially dismissed on the basis that the complaint did not follow the previously set federal precedence of requiring a complaint "to state a claim upon which relief could be given".[2] The Supreme Court later held that this decision was a mistake based on their subjective interpretation of the Federal Rules of Procedure. The Court prioritized Rule 8 while glossing over Rule 12 to establish a fairly liberating set of standards for pleading procedures that were then adopted by many state legislatures.[3]
