Federal Courts

This course is about the federal judicial system and its relationship to Congress, the executive branch, state legislatures, and state courts. The course begins by examining the elements of a justiciable "case" or "controversy" in federal court; we will ask what an "advisory opinion" might be, and we will learn about doctrines of standing, ripeness, mootness, and political questions. We will proceed to study Congress’s power over the subject-matter jurisdiction of federal courts and the uses to which Congress has put that power. Once we have a sense of the jurisdiction of the federal courts, we will consider the sources of the substantive rules of decision that both state and federal courts apply in cases within their jurisdiction; for instance, we will examine how courts decide whether a particular plaintiff has a cause of action to seek judicial relief for the violation of a particular legal duty, and we will also discuss various kinds of rules that are lumped together under the rubric of "federal common law." Finally, we will consider some advanced topics in judicial federalism, including the doctrine of state sovereign immunity, various abstention doctrines applied by the federal courts, and the law of habeas corpus.