Finality of Decision

Finality of Decision By statute (Title 28, sec. 1257 of the U.S. Code), the Supreme Court has jurisdiction to review “[f]inal judgments or decrees rendered by the highest court of a State in which a decision could be had.” Section 1257 makes review possible when the validity of a federal law is drawn in question, when a state statute is drawn in question for being repugnant to some federal law, or when a claim is made under some federal law. This jurisdiction rests on a federal question: a controlling issue of federal law.

The Constitution does not expressly authorize the Supreme Court to review decisions of the state courts. Today this authority is taken for granted, but it has not always been so. As Charles Alan Wright explained in Law of Federal Courts: “It is unusual for the court of one sovereign to have appellate jurisdiction over the courts of other sovereigns, but federalism itself is—or was when the Constitution was adopted—an unusual system, and the Supremacy Clause is a sufficient basis on which to rest the appellate jurisdiction over state court decisions” (p. 782).

Section 25 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 generally authorized the Supreme Court to review state court decisions that invalidated a federal statute or treaty, or ruled against a claim based on federal law. Between 1790 and 1815, the Court reviewed seventeen cases from state courts. Its authority was directly challenged when the Virginia Court of Appeals refused to obey a mandate of the Supreme Court on the ground that section 25 was unconstitutional. Justice Joseph Story wrote the opinion refuting the Virginia state court in the famous decision of Martin v. Hunter's Lessee (1816). Chief Justice John Marshall, who had not participated in that decision, reaffirmed the constitutionality of section 25 and the authority of the Supreme Court to review state court judgments in Cohens v. Virginia (1821). Chief Justice Roger B. Taney rebuffed the last serious challenge to this orthodoxy in *Ableman v. Booth (1859), a dramatic pre‐Civil War decision sustaining the Fugitive Slave Act (See Fugitive Slaves).

To satisfy section 1257, a state court decision must be “final” in two ways. First, procedurally the decision must be one that is not subject to further review in any higher state court. A decision need not have been made by the state supreme court but only by “the highest court of a state in which a decision might be had.” For example, the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed a decision of the police court of Louisville, Kentucky, in Thompson v. City of Louisville (1960), since there was no further review possible in the state courts.

Second, the Court in Catlin v. United States (1945) has defined a judgment or decree to be functionally final if it “ends the litigation on the merits and leaves nothing for the court to do but execute the judgment” (p. 233). Finality depends on the interpretation of the federal statute, section 1257, and the Court has developed a pragmatic approach to treat some categories of judgments as sufficiently final to allow for review (Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn (1975). A related jurisdictional statute (Title 28, sec. 1254 of the U.S. Code) does not require a final judgment in appeals from the U.S. courts of appeals so that the Supreme Court, in exceptional circumstances, may grant review before the lower federal court has decided the case, as in United States v. *Nixon (1974).

The requirement of finality serves several ends. These were highlighted by Justice William O. * Douglas in North Dakota State Board of Pharmacy v. Snyder's Drug Stores, Inc. (1973): “(1) it avoids piecemeal review of state court decisions; (2) it avoids giving advisory opinions in cases where there may be no real ‘case’ or ‘controversy’ in the sense of Art. III [see Cases and Controversies]; (3) it limits federal review of state court determinations of federal constitutional issues to leave at a minimum federal intrusion in state affairs” (p. 159).

The requirement of finality therefore is not merely a technical abstraction, but a requirement based on important underlying principles of judicial efficiency and federalism. Considerations of federalism pull in opposite directions: Interests of comity would suggest that the Supreme Court set a high threshold of finality to show respect for sovereign state courts; however, the Supreme Court necessarily also has a special role in preserving uniformity and supremacy in federal law. It is thus often necessary for the Court to make adjustments between state judicial sovereignty and federal supremacy.

See also Federalism.

Bibliography

Robert L. Stern,, Eugene Gressman,, Stephen M. Shapiro,, and and Kenneth S. Geller , Supreme Court Practice, 8th ed. (2002).
Charles Alan Wright and and Mary Kay Kane , Law of Federal Courts, 6th ed. (2002).

Thomas E. Baker