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The law of theUnited States comprises many levels ofcodified and uncodified forms oflaw,[1] of which the supreme law is the nation'sConstitution, which prescribes the foundation of thefederal government of the United States, as well as variouscivil liberties. The Constitution sets out the boundaries of federal law, which consists ofActs of Congress,[2]treaties ratified by theSenate,[3] regulations promulgated by theexecutive branch,[4] andcase law originating from thefederal judiciary.[5] TheUnited States Code is the official compilation andcodification of general and permanent federal statutory law.
The Constitution provides that it, as well as federal laws and treaties that are made pursuant to it, preempt conflicting state and territorial laws in the 50U.S. states and in the territories.[6] However, the scope of federal preemption is limited because the scope of federal power is not universal. In the dual sovereign[7] system ofAmerican federalism (actually tripartite[8] because of the presence ofIndian reservations), states are theplenarysovereigns, each with their ownconstitution, while the federal sovereign possesses only the limited supreme authority enumerated in the Constitution.[9] Indeed, states may grant their citizens broader rights than the federal Constitution as long as they do not infringe on any federal constitutional rights.[10][11] Thus U.S. law (especially the actual "living law" ofcontract,tort,property,probate,criminal andfamily law, experienced by citizens on a day-to-day basis) consists primarily ofstate law, which, while sometimes harmonized, can and does vary greatly from one state to the next.[12][13] Even in areas governed by federal law, state law is often supplemented, rather than preempted.[citation needed]
At both the federal and state levels, with the exception of thelegal system of Louisiana, the law of the United States is largely derived from thecommon law system ofEnglish law, which was in force inBritish America at the time of theAmerican Revolutionary War.[14][15][16] However, American law has diverged greatly from its English ancestor both in terms of substance and procedure[17] and has incorporated a number ofcivil law innovations.
In the United States, the law is derived from five sources:constitutional law,statutory law, treaties,administrative regulations, and the common law (which includes case law).[18]
If Congress enacts a statute that conflicts with the Constitution, state or federal courts may rule that law to beunconstitutional and declare it invalid.[19]
Notably, a statute does not automatically disappear merely because it has been found unconstitutional; it may, however, be deleted by a subsequent statute. Many federal and state statutes have remained on the books for decades after they were ruled to be unconstitutional. However, under the principle ofstare decisis, a lower court that enforces a statute of a kind previously declared unconstitutional will risk reversal by the Supreme Court.[20] Conversely, any court that refuses to enforce a statute previously upheld as constitutional by higher courts risks being reversed by the Supreme Court.[21][22]
The United States and mostCommonwealth countries are heirs to the common law legal tradition of English law.[23] Certain practices traditionally allowed under English common law were expressly outlawed by the Constitution, such asbills of attainder[24] and general search warrants.[25]
As common law courts, U.S. courts have inherited the principle ofstare decisis.[26] American judges, like common law judges elsewhere, not only apply the law, they also make the law, to the extent that their decisions in the cases before them become precedent for decisions in future cases.[27]
The actual substance of English law was formally "received" into the United States in several ways. First, all U.S. states except Louisiana have enacted "reception statutes" which generally state that the common law of England (particularly judge-made law) is the law of the state to the extent that it is not repugnant to domestic law or indigenous conditions.[28] Some reception statutes impose a specific cutoff date for reception, such as the date of a colony's founding, while others are deliberately vague.[29] Thus, contemporary U.S. courts often cite pre-Revolution cases when discussing the evolution of an ancient judge-made common law principle into its modern form,[29] such as the heightened duty of care traditionally imposed uponcommon carriers.[30]
Second, a small number of important British statutes in effect at the time of the Revolution have been independently reenacted by U.S. states. Two examples are theStatute of Frauds (still widely known in the U.S. by that name) and theStatute of 13 Elizabeth (the ancestor of the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act). Such English statutes are still regularly cited in contemporary American cases interpreting their modern American descendants.[31]
Despite the presence of reception statutes, much ofcontemporary American common law has diverged significantly from English common law.[32] Although the courts of the various Commonwealth nations are often influenced by each other's rulings, American courts rarely follow post-Revolution precedents from England or the British Commonwealth.
Early on, American courts, even after the Revolution, often did cite contemporary English cases, because appellate decisions from many American courts were not regularly reported until the mid-19th century. Lawyers and judges used English legal materials to fill the gap.[33] Citations to English decisions gradually disappeared during the 19th century as American courts developed their own principles to resolve the legal problems of the American people.[34] The number of published volumes of American reports soared from eighteen in 1810 to over 8,000 by 1910.[35] By 1879 one of the delegates to theCalifornia constitutional convention was already complaining: "Now, when we require them to state the reasons for a decision, we do not mean they shall write a hundred pages of detail. We [do] not mean that they shall include the small cases, and impose on the country all this fine judicial literature, for the Lord knows we have got enough of that already."[36][37]
Today, in the words of Stanford law professorLawrence M. Friedman: "American cases rarely cite foreign materials. Courts occasionally cite a British classic or two, a famous old case, or a nod toBlackstone; but current British law almost never gets any mention."[38] Foreign law has never been cited as binding precedent, but as a reflection of the shared values of Anglo-American civilization or even Western civilization in general.[39]
Federal law originates with the Constitution, which gives Congress the power to enactstatutes for certain limited purposes like regulatinginterstate commerce. TheUnited States Code is the official compilation and codification of the general and permanent federal statutes. Many statutes give executive branch agencies the power to createregulations, which are published in theFederal Register and codified into theCode of Federal Regulations. From 1984 to 2024, regulations generally also carried the force of law under theChevron doctrine, but are now subject only to a lesser form of judicial deference known asSkidmore deference. Many lawsuits turn on the meaning of a federal statute or regulation, and judicial interpretations of such meaning carry legal force under the principle ofstare decisis.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, federal law traditionally focused on areas where there was an express grant of power to the federal government in the federal Constitution, like themilitary,money,foreign relations (especially international treaties),tariffs,intellectual property (specificallypatents andcopyrights), andmail. Since the start of the 20th century, broad interpretations of theCommerce andSpending Clauses of the Constitution have enabled federal law to expand into areas likeaviation,telecommunications,railroads,pharmaceuticals,antitrust, andtrademarks. In some areas, like aviation and railroads, the federal government has developed a comprehensive scheme that preempts virtually all state law, while in others, like family law, a relatively small number of federal statutes (generally covering interstate and international situations) interacts with a much larger body of state law. In areas like antitrust, trademark, andemployment law, there are powerful laws at both the federal and state levels that coexist with each other. In a handful of areas likeinsurance, Congress has enacted laws expressly refusing to regulate them as long as the states have laws regulating them (see, e.g., theMcCarran–Ferguson Act).
After the president signs a bill into law (or Congress enacts it over the president's veto), it is delivered to theOffice of the Federal Register (OFR) of theNational Archives and Records Administration (NARA) where it is assigned a law number, and prepared for publication as aslip law.[40][41] Public laws, but not private laws, are also given legal statutory citation by the OFR. At the end of each session of Congress, the slip laws are compiled into bound volumes called theUnited States Statutes at Large, and they are known assession laws. The Statutes at Large present a chronological arrangement of the laws in the exact order that they have been enacted.[42]
Public laws are incorporated into theUnited States Code, which is a codification of all general and permanent laws of the United States. The main edition is published every six years by theOffice of the Law Revision Counsel of theHouse of Representatives, and cumulative supplements are published annually.[43] The U.S. Code is arranged by subject matter, and it shows the present status of laws (with amendments already incorporated in the text) that have been amended on one or more occasions.
Congress often enacts statutes that grant broadrulemaking authority tofederal agencies. Often, Congress is simply toogridlocked to draft detailed statutes that explain how the agency should react to every possible situation, or Congress believes the agency's technical specialists are best equipped to deal with particular fact situations as they arise. Therefore, federal agencies are authorized to promulgate regulations.[44]
Regulations are adopted pursuant to theAdministrative Procedure Act (APA). Regulations are first proposed and published in the Federal Register (FR or Fed. Reg.) and subject to a public comment period. Eventually, after a period for public comment and revisions based on comments received, a final version is published in the Federal Register. The regulations are codified and incorporated into the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) which is published once a year on a rolling schedule.
Besides regulations formally promulgated under the APA, federal agencies also frequently promulgate an enormous amount of forms, manuals, policy statements, letters, and rulings. These documents may be considered by a court as persuasive authority as to how a particular statute or regulation may be interpreted (known asSkidmore deference), but are not entitled toChevron deference.
Unlike the situation with the states, there is no plenary reception statute at the federal level that continued the common law and thereby granted federal courts the power to formulatelegal precedent like their English predecessors. Federal courts are solely creatures of the federal Constitution and the federal Judiciary Acts.[45] However, it is universally accepted that theFounding Fathers of the United States, by vesting "judicial power" into the Supreme Court and the inferior federal courts inArticle Three of the United States Constitution, thereby vested in them the implied judicial power of common law courts to formulatepersuasive precedent; this power was widely accepted, understood, and recognized by the Founding Fathers at the time the Constitution was ratified.[46] Several legal scholars have argued that the federal judicial power to decide "cases or controversies" necessarily includes the power to decide the precedential effect of those cases and controversies.[47]
The difficult question is whether federal judicial power extends to formulatingbinding precedent through strict adherence to the rule ofstare decisis. This is where the act of deciding a case becomes a limited form of lawmaking in itself, in that an appellate court's rulings will thereby bind itself and lower courts in future cases (and therefore also implicitly binds all persons within the court's jurisdiction). Prior to a major change to federal court rules in 2007, about one-fifth of federal appellate cases were published and thereby became binding precedents, while the rest were unpublished and bound only the parties to each case.[46]
As federal judgeAlex Kozinski has pointed out, binding precedent as we know it today simply did not exist at the time the Constitution was framed.[46] Judicial decisions were not consistently, accurately, and faithfully reported on both sides of the Atlantic (reporters often simply rewrote or failed to publish decisions which they disliked), and the United Kingdom lacked a coherent court hierarchy prior to the end of the 19th century.[46] Furthermore, English judges in the eighteenth century subscribed to now-obsoletenatural law theories of law, by which law was believed to have an existence independent of what individual judges said. Judges saw themselves as merely declaring the law which had always theoretically existed, and not as making the law.[46] Therefore, a judge could reject another judge's opinion as simply an incorrect statement of the law, in the way that scientists regularly reject each other's conclusions as incorrect statements of the laws of science.[46]
In turn, according to Kozinski's analysis, the contemporary rule of binding precedent became possible in the U.S. in the nineteenth century only after the creation of a clear court hierarchy (under theJudiciary Acts), and the beginning of regularverbatim publication of U.S. appellate decisions byWest Publishing.[46] The rule gradually developed, case-by-case, as an extension of the judiciary'spublic policy of effective judicial administration (that is, in order to efficiently exercise the judicial power).[46] The rule of binding precedent is generally justified today as a matter of public policy, first, as a matter of fundamental fairness, and second, because in the absence of case law, it would be completely unworkable for every minor issue in every legal case to be briefed, argued, and decided from first principles (such as relevant statutes, constitutional provisions, and underlying public policies), which in turn would create hopeless inefficiency, instability, and unpredictability, and thereby undermine therule of law.[48][49] The contemporary form of the rule is descended from JusticeLouis Brandeis's "landmark dissent in 1932'sBurnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co.", which "catalogued the Court's actual overruling practices in such a powerful manner that his attendant stare decisis analysis immediately assumed canonical authority."[50]
Here is a typical exposition of how public policy supports the rule of binding precedent in a 2008majority opinion signed byJustice Breyer:
Justice Brandeis once observed that "in most matters it is more important that the applicable rule of law be settled than that it be settled right."Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co. [...] To overturn a decision settling one such matter simply because we might believe that decision is no longer "right" would inevitably reflect a willingness to reconsider others. And that willingness could itself threaten to substitute disruption, confusion, and uncertainty for necessary legal stability. We have not found here any factors that might overcome these considerations.[51]
It is now sometimes possible, over time, for a line of precedents to drift from the express language of any underlying statutory or constitutional texts until the courts' decisions establish doctrines that were not considered by the texts' drafters. This trend has been strongly evident in federalsubstantive due process[52] and Commerce Clause decisions.[53]Originalists and political conservatives, such as Associate JusticeAntonin Scalia have criticized this trend as anti-democratic.[54][55][56][57]
Under the doctrine ofErie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins (1938), there isno general federal common law. Although federal courts can create federal common law in the form of case law, such law must be linked one way or another to the interpretation of a particular federal constitutional provision, statute, or regulation (which was either enacted as part of the Constitution or pursuant to constitutional authority). Federal courts lack the plenary power possessed by state courts to simply make up law, which the latter are able to do in the absence of constitutional or statutory provisions replacing the common law.[9] Only in a few narrow limited areas, like maritime law,[58] has the Constitution expressly authorized the continuation of English common law at the federal level (meaning that in those areas federal courts can continue to make law as they see fit, subject to the limitations ofstare decisis).
The other major implication of theErie doctrine is that federal courts cannot dictate the content of state law when there is no federal issue (and thus no federal supremacy issue) in a case.[59] When hearing claims under state law pursuant todiversity jurisdiction, federal trial courtsmust apply the statutory and decisional law of the state in which they sit, as if they were a court of that state,[60] even if they believe that the relevant state law is irrational or just bad public policy.[61]
UnderErie, such federal deference to state law applies only in one direction: state courts are not bound by federal interpretations of state law.[62] Similarly, state courts are also not bound by most federal interpretations of federal law. In the vast majority of state courts, interpretations of federal law from federalcourts of appeals anddistrict courts can be cited as persuasive authority, but state courts are not bound by those interpretations.[63] The U.S. Supreme Court has never squarely addressed the issue, but has signaled in dicta that it sides with this rule.[63][64] Therefore, in those states, there is only one federal court that binds all state courts as to the interpretation of federal law and the federal Constitution: the U.S. Supreme Court itself.[63]
The fifty American states are separatesovereigns,[65] with their ownstate constitutions,state governments, andstate courts. All states have a legislative branch which enacts state statutes, an executive branch that promulgates state regulations pursuant to statutory authorization, and a judicial branch that applies, interprets, and occasionally overturns both state statutes and regulations, as well as local ordinances. They retain plenary power to make laws covering anything not preempted by the federal Constitution, federal statutes, or international treaties ratified by the federal Senate. Normally,state supreme courts are the final interpreters of state constitutions and state law, unless their interpretation itself presents a federal issue, in which case a decision may be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court by way of a petition for writ ofcertiorari.[66] State laws have dramatically diverged in the centuries since independence, to the extent that the United States cannot be regarded as one legal system as to the majority of types of law traditionally under state control, but must be regarded as 50separate systems of tort law, family law, property law, contract law, criminal law, and so on.[67]
Most cases are litigated in state courts and involve claims and defenses under state laws.[68][69] In a 2018 report, theNational Center for State Courts' Court Statistics Project found that state trial courts received 83.8 million newly filed cases in 2018, which consisted of 44.4 million traffic cases, 17.0 million criminal cases, 16.4 million civil cases, 4.7 million domestic relations cases, and 1.2 million juvenile cases.[70] In 2018, state appellate courts received 234,000 new cases.[70] By way of comparison, all federal district courts in 2016 together received only about 274,552 new civil cases, 79,787 new criminal cases, and 833,515 bankruptcy cases, while federal appellate courts received 53,649 new cases.[71]
States have delegated lawmaking powers to thousands ofagencies,townships,counties,cities, andspecial districts. And all the state constitutions, statutes and regulations (as well as all the ordinances and regulations promulgated by local entities) are subject to judicial interpretation like their federal counterparts.[72]
It is common for residents of majorU.S. metropolitan areas to live under six or more layers of special districts as well as a town or city, and a county or township (in addition to the federal and state governments).[73] Thus, at any given time, the average American citizen is subject to the rules and regulations of several dozen different agencies at the federal, state, and local levels, depending upon one's current location and behavior.
American lawyers draw a fundamental distinction between procedural law (which controls the procedure by which legal rights and duties are vindicated)[74] and substantive law (the actual substance of law, which is usually expressed in the form of various legal rights and duties).[75][76] (The remainder of this article requires the reader to be already familiar with the contents of the separate article onstate law.)
Criminal law involves theprosecution by the state of wrongful acts which are considered to be so serious that they are a breach of the sovereign's peace (and cannot be deterred or remedied by mere lawsuits between private parties). Generally,crimes can result inincarceration, but torts (see below) cannot. The majority of the crimes committed in the United States are prosecuted and punished at the state level.[77] Federal criminal law focuses on areas specifically relevant to the federal government like evading payment of federal income tax, mail theft, or physical attacks on federal officials, as well as interstate crimes like drug trafficking and wire fraud.
All states have somewhat similar laws in regard to "higher crimes" (orfelonies), such asmurder andrape, although penalties for these crimes may vary from state to state.Capital punishment is permitted in some states but not others.Three strikes laws in certain states impose harsh penalties on repeat offenders.
Some states distinguish between two levels: felonies andmisdemeanors (minor crimes).[77] Generally, most felony convictions result in lengthyprison sentences as well as subsequentprobation, largefines, and orders to payrestitution directly to victims; while misdemeanors may lead to a year or less in jail and a substantial fine. To simplify the prosecution of traffic violations and other relatively minor crimes, some states have added a third level,infractions. These may result in fines and sometimes the loss of one's driver's license, but no jail time.
On average, only three percent of criminal cases are resolved by jury trial; 97 percent are terminated either byplea bargaining or dismissal of the charges.[78]
For public welfare offenses where the state is punishing merely risky (as opposed to injurious) behavior, there is significant diversity across the various states. For example, punishments fordrunk driving varied greatly prior to 1990. State laws dealing withdrug crimes still vary widely, with some states treating possession of small amounts of drugs as a misdemeanor offense or as a medical issue and others categorizing the same offense as a seriousfelony.
The law ofcriminal procedure in the United States consists of a massive overlay of federal constitutional case law interwoven with the federal and state statutes that actually provide the foundation for the creation and operation of law enforcement agencies and prison systems as well as the proceedings in criminal trials. Due to the perennial inability of legislatures in the U.S. to enact statutes that would actually force law enforcement officers to respect the constitutional rights of criminal suspects and convicts, the federal judiciary gradually developed theexclusionary rule as a method to enforce such rights.[79] In turn, the exclusionary rule spawned a family of judge-made remedies for the abuse of law enforcement powers, of which the most famous is theMiranda warning. The writ ofhabeas corpus is often used by suspects and convicts to challenge their detention, while theThird Enforcement Act andBivens actions are used by suspects to recover tort damages for police brutality.
The law ofcivil procedure governs process in all judicial proceedings involving lawsuits between private parties. Traditional common lawpleading was replaced by code pleading in 27 states after New York enacted theField Code in 1850 and code pleading in turn was subsequently replaced again in most states by modern notice pleading during the 20th century. The old English division between common law andequity courts was abolished in the federal courts by the adoption of theFederal Rules of Civil Procedure in 1938; it has also been independently abolished by legislative acts in nearly all states. TheDelaware Court of Chancery is the most prominent of the small number of remaining equity courts.
Thirty-five states have adopted rules of civil procedure modeled after the FRCP (including rule numbers). However, in doing so, they had to make some modifications to account for the fact that state courts have broad general jurisdiction while federal courts have relatively limited jurisdiction.
New York, Illinois, and California are the most significant states that have not adopted the FRCP. Furthermore, all three states continue to maintain most of their civil procedure laws in the form of codified statutes enacted by the state legislature, as opposed to court rules promulgated by the state supreme court, on the ground that the latter are undemocratic. But certain key portions of their civil procedure laws have been modified by their legislatures to bring them closer to federal civil procedure.[80]
Generally, American civil procedure has several notable features, including extensive pretrialdiscovery, heavy reliance on live testimony obtained atdeposition or elicited in front of ajury, and aggressive pretrial "law and motion" practice designed to result in a pretrial disposition (that is,summary judgment) or a settlement. U.S. courts pioneered the concept of the opt-outclass action, the "most extreme development of collective civil litigation" in the world, by which the burden falls on class members to notify the court that they do not wish to be bound by the judgment, as opposed to opt-in class actions, where class members must join into the class.[81] Another unique feature is the so-calledAmerican Rule under which parties generally bear their own attorneys' fees (as opposed to theEnglish Rule of "loser pays"), though American legislators and courts have carved out numerous exceptions.
Contract law covers obligations established by agreement (express or implied) between private parties.[82] Generally, contract law in transactions involving the sale of goods has become highly standardized nationwide as a result of the widespread adoption of the Uniform Commercial Code. However, there is still significant diversity in the interpretation of other kinds of contracts, depending upon the extent to which a given state has codified its common law of contracts or adopted portions of theRestatement (Second) of Contracts.
Parties are permitted to agree toarbitrate disputes arising from their contracts. Under theFederal Arbitration Act (which has been interpreted to coverall contracts arising under federal or state law), arbitration clauses are generally enforceable unless the party resisting arbitration can showunconscionability orfraud or something else which undermines the entire contract.
Tort law generally covers any civil action between private parties arising from wrongful acts that amount to a breach of general obligations imposed by law and not by contract. This broad family of civil wrongs involves interference "with person, property, reputation, or commercial or social advantage."[83]
Tort law covers the entire imaginable spectrum of wrongs that humans can inflict upon each other, and it partially overlaps with wrongs also punishable by criminal law. It is primarily a matter of state law and is usually developed through case law from state appellate courts; it is rarely a matter of federal law, although some federal statutes, such as theVolunteer Protection Act and theProtection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, limit the liability of people who commit torts under state law. State tort-related statutes focus on discrete issues such as authorizingwrongful death claims (which did not exist at common law).[84] Although the American Law Institute has attempted to standardize tort law through the development of several versions of the Restatement of Torts, many states have chosen to adopt only certain sections of the Restatements and to reject others. Thus, because of its immense size and diversity, American tort law cannot be easily summarized.
For example, a few jurisdictions allow actions fornegligent infliction of emotional distress even in the absence of physical injury to the plaintiff, but most do not. For any particular tort, states differ on the causes of action, types and scope of remedies, statutes of limitations, and the amount of specificity with which one must plead the cause. With practically any aspect of tort law, there is a "majority rule" adhered to by most states, and one or more "minority rules."
Notably, the most broadly influential innovation of 20th-century American tort law was the rule ofstrict liability fordefective products, which originated with judicial glosses on the law ofwarranty. In 1963,Roger J. Traynor of theSupreme Court of California threw awaylegal fictions based on warranties and imposed strict liability for defective products as a matter ofpublic policy in the landmark case ofGreenman v. Yuba Power Products.[85] The American Law Institute subsequently adopted a slightly different version of theGreenman rule in Section 402A of theRestatement (Second) of Torts, which was published in 1964 and was very influential throughout the United States.[86] Outside the U.S., the rule was adopted by the European Economic Community in the Product Liability Directive of July 1985,[87] by Australia in July 1992,[88] and by Japan in June 1994.[89]
By the 1990s, the avalanche of American cases resulting fromGreenman and Section 402A had become so complicated that another restatement was needed, which occurred with the 1997 publication of theRestatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability.[90]
Historically,American property law has been heavily influenced byEnglish land law,[91] and is therefore concerned withreal property first andpersonal property second.[92] It is also primarily a matter of state law, and the level of interstate diversity in the law of property is much more substantial than in contract and tort.[92] Efforts by both the American Law Institute[93] and theUniform Law Commission to reduce such interstate diversity were spectacular failures.[94][95][96]
The majority of states use atitle recording system (coupled with privately providedtitle insurance) to manage title to real property, althoughtitle registration (Torrens title) is also allowed in a small minority of states.[97] Title to personal property is usually not registered, with the notable exceptions ofmotor vehicles (through a statedepartment of motor vehicles or equivalent), bicycles (in certain cities and counties), andsome types of firearms (in certain states).[98]
In the United States,family law governs relationships between adults, and relationships between parents and their children.[99] It is a discrete area of law, with lawyers who focus in family law and specialized family law courts. American family law is relatively young in comparison to European family law; it did not take flight until theno-fault divorce revolution of the 1960s.[100] Before the 1950s, widespread religious, legal, and social prohibitions againstdivorce in the United States meant that divorces were rare, were often seen as fact-driven matters (meaning that they were perceived as turning on each case's unique facts and not broadly generalizable legal principles).[101] The rise of no-fault divorce caused divorce litigation to shift away from the question of who was at fault for the collapse of the marriage, and to focus instead on issues such asdivision of property,spousal support, andchild support.[102]
Family cases are traditionally a matter of state law and are virtually always heard only in state courts.[103][104] Certain kinds of contract, tort, and property civil actions involving state law issues can be heard in federal courts under diversity jurisdiction, but federal courts decline to hear family cases under the "domestic relations exception" to diversity jurisdiction.[103]
Although family cases are heard in state courts, there has been a trend towards federalization of certain specific issues in family law. State courts and the lawyers who practice before them must be aware of federal income tax and bankruptcy implications of a divorce judgment, federal constitutional rights to abortion and paternity, and federal statutes governing interstate child custody disputes and interstate child support enforcement.[104]
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