September 25: State Courts in a Federal System

State courts are the courts most likely to affect an ordinary person’s life.
Development of the common law of property, tort and contract, as well as the law governing our most personal relationships, family law, are the province of state courts. Most criminal law is state law; and most criminal prosecutions happen in state court. In these, and in other areas, state courts have been innovators. For example, state courts have taken the lead in developing new ways to work with non-violent criminal offenders, through the creation of problem-solving courts such as veterans' treatment courts, drug courts, and mental health courts. And while most people think only of the U.S. Constitution when they think of their rights, each of our fifty states has its own constitution too, whose interpretation, by state judges, is not formally constrained by the parallel work of the federal courts.
In other words, state courts matter. In fact, there was no guarantee that federal courts, besides the Supreme Court, would even exist. Our Constitution did not require it—Congress had the discretion, but not duty, to create lower federal courts. But as the federal court system has grown, it has developed an ever-evolving, complicated relationship with the state courts. There are many doctrines, such as abstention and procedural requirements in habeas corpus that are designed to respect the work of the state courts and recognize the states’ primacy. But how robustly should federal courts apply these doctrines? And how much deference should state courts give to federal court resolution of the parallel problems that confront them?
These, and many other questions, are inherent in our federal system.
Title:
State Courts in a Federal System
When/Where:
Tuesday, September 25, 2018
4:30 PM - 5:30 PM
Webcast
Also live at:
Moot Courtroom (A59)
11075 East Blvd.
Cleveland, Ohio 44106
Speaker:
The Honorable Joan L. Larsen is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She was nominated by the President on May 8, 2017 and confirmed by the Senate on November 1, 2017. Before her appointment to the federal bench, Judge Larsen served two terms as a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, where she was the court’s liaison to Michigan’s drug, sobriety, mental health and veteran’s courts.
By:
Case Western Reserve University School of Law
Credit:
1 hour of in-person CLE credit, pending approval
Cost:
Free and open to the public.
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