You know, Christmas used to be the time for Erie stories. “A Christmas Carol” is a ghost story, after all.
If a case starts in Louisiana, with purely Louisiana parties involved, and gets appealed up to the Federal level, are Federal courts going to act like Civil Law courts in order to keep to the spirit of the Erie Doctrine, or is applying Louisiana law in a Common Law context sufficient? Given that Civil Law doesn’t allow dissenting opinions to be attached to decisions, if such a case made it to the Supreme Court, would the dissenters be out of luck when it came to expressing their disgust with the majority? (cite)
So, is there really a huge difference between Common Law and Civil Law such that this would even be a problem in practice?
(Also… I know Canada has a similar situation of a Civil Law jurisdiction embedded within a Common Law jurisdiction when it comes to Quebec, but does Canada have anything like the Erie Doctrine? Do any countries besides America and Canada have jurisdictions with different systems of law operating at different levels of jurisdiction?)
A federal court can generally only hear a case through subject matter or diversity jurisdiction (for example the case involves a federal statute or you’re dealing with parties from different states). As your hypothetical describes purely LA parties, with a case that started in LA state court, the only way a federal court can hear the case is probably through a constitutional question that has arisen from the underlying case. This happens occasionally with criminal law cases (e.g., a criminal defendant gets convicted in state court, appeals all the way to the State Supreme Court and loses, and the case subsequently winds up at the US Supreme Court based on a Constitutional question). Once a federal court has jurisdiction over a case, it will carry out the proceedings under the federal procedural rules (FRCP) and applying law consistent with precedent (where the “common law” part comes in).
There are certain situations when federal courts will apply State law. For example, federal courts will sometimes look into the State courts’ definition of contract terms or other technical definitions. But your question essentially boils down to whether federal courts are bound to apply the procedural system from the civil-law jurisdiction of LA – if so, the answer is no, as procedurally speaking federal courts will use the FRCP and local (to the federal district) rules when conducting their business.
Not all courts in civil law jurisdictions follow the principle of no dissenting judgments, which is primarily a principle of the French courts. Courts in other civil law jurisdictions do allow for dissents. For example, there are dissents in the Quebec courts. What is the rule in Louisiana? Are there dissents in the Louisiana courts?
No equivalent to the Erie doctrine in Canada, because the Supreme Court of Canada is a “general court of appeal”, unlike SCOTUS, which has only limited appellate jurisdiction. The SCC can hear an appeal on any question of law, including questions of pure provincial law such as a question of civil law under the Civil Code of Quebec.
The Supreme Court of Canada isn’t a common law court when it hears an appeal from Quebec on a matter of civil law. It’s a civil law court.
The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom hears appeals in common law matters from England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and civil law matters from Scotland.
There is a requirement that a certain number of Canadian Supreme Court justices (3) must be proficient/ have experience with Quebec law. Former PM Harper tried to push one of his favourites onto the court as a Quebec judge even though general consensus was he did not qualify. He also threatened to unilaterally change the rules if he did not like the answer…
In the end he backed down, but not before attacking the head of the Supreme Court through the media, accusing her of misconduct.
Thanks. Interesting article. I had once been PC, having been turned off by Trudeau. Then, Mulroney made me more cynical. I had always believed the sins of the father should not be visited upon the child, with two exceptions, Ben Mulroney and Justin Trudeau. For the last election, I have changed my mind about Trudeau. However, I still turn off CTV when Ben Mulroney comes on.
Louisiana’s strange. First the drive-through liquor stores, now dissents in a Civil Law jurisdiction. And I hear their primary system is a real jungle…
That opinion (PDF, BTW) had two kinds of dissent: Dissent with the holding of the US Supreme Court in Obergefell and Louisiana Supreme Court justices dissenting among themselves.
So, yes, it does prove your point that dissenting justices are allowed to attach opinions to Louisiana Supreme Court decisions.
Well, the former isn’t a dissent per se. The meaning of the term is an opinion in disagreement with the majority in the case at bar. Those “dissents” are more accurately described as “whining.”
