From: ahk@chinet.com

Stephen Sprunk  wrote:
>On 15-May-14 23:54, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>>Stephen Sprunk  wrote:
>>>On 13-May-14 21:04, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>>>>Stephen Sprunk  wrote:
>>>>>On 11-May-14 08:47, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

>>>>>>Wrong again, Stephen; that's not how federalism works. State
>>>>>>law and federal law are parallel systems, not
>>>>>>inferior/superior.

>>>>>The US Constitution, and the US Civil War, disagree with you;
>>>>>federal law/courts are superior to state law/courts.

>>>>There can be overlapping jurisdiction of the two systems. But
>>>>there is no shortage of incidents in which state courts have
>>>>sole jurisdiction over the issue at trial, with no appeal in
>>>>federal court. If federal law was always superior to state law as
>>>>you claim, then any state matter would be appealable to federal
>>>>court in all circumstances.

>>>Yes, federal courts have limited jurisdiction; if there is no
>>>federal controversy at stake, they can't take the case.

>>I said that like 12 followups back.

>Not quite, but even if you had, I wouldn't have disagreed.

You're profficient at making agreement sound like disagreement,
as you've done here.

>However, one can fairly easily _manufacture_ a federal controversy to
>give federal courts jurisdiction; today this is generally done via the
>14th Amd, but prior to that diversity cases were common as well.

Sigh. Anybody can sue for anything, yes. Sometimes you have a judge
that's sharp and on the ball who doesn't allow a case to proceed to trial
for lack of "subject matter jurisdiction", if I'm using that term correctly.
You've certainly heard of plaintiffs "jurisdiction shopping", attempting to
get the case tried in different courts till they find a sympathetic judge.

>>>However, one can appeal some cases (even if not all cases) from
>>>state courts to federal courts, state courts are obligated to honor
>>>the rulings of federal courts, and one can never appeal from
>>>federal courts to state courts; this clearly means that one system
>>>is superior to the other.

>>With regard to the FEDERAL issue only; the trial court goes on to
>>reconsider issues of state law with respect to the federal ruling.
>>It's not like the trial moves to federal court.

>That's how _all_ appeals work, assuming the trial court was a court of
>record, regardless of whether the trial/appellate courts are
>state/state, state/federal or federal/federal.

I have no idea what you're saying about "trial court as a court of record".
Are you talking about REPORTED appellate decisions, given that many of
them aren't? Trial courts just don't sent precedent, but they can give a
strong hint to various lawyers how things could go in similar trials in
other courts.

Where I live, there's a legal service that tracks verdicts, especially
class actions, as they have reporters in every courtroom. It's done
elsewhere in the country, too, but this is highly specialized news coverage,
not precedent-setting reported decisions in the sense you may be
talking about.

>If the trial court was not a court of record, then an appeal requires a
>new trial in the appellate court.

Um, what? There are NEVER trials at that level (except for a handful of
matters in which an appellate court has original jurisdiction). I have
no idea what you're really trying to say.

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