HKB
EARLY USE OF STATE COURTS IN ENFORCEMENT OF FEDERAL LAW
The final phase of the relation of State courts has to do with their administration of federal law. Although it is the general rule that Congress cannot vest the judicial power of the United States in courts other than those created in pursuance of article III,[701] it has from the beginning of the National Government left to the State courts wide areas of jurisdiction which it might have vested exclusively in the federal courts, section 25 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 offering the supreme illustration. But going far beyond that, in the latter years of the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth, Congress provided that suits by the National Government itself for fines, forfeitures, and penalties imposed by the revenue laws might be brought in State courts of competent jurisdiction as well as in the federal courts.[702] The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793,[703] the Naturalization Act of 1795,[704] and the Alien Enemies Act of 1798,[705] all imposed positive duties on State courts to enforce federal law. In 1799 the State courts were vested with jurisdiction to try criminal offenses against federal laws.[706] Extensive reliance was placed on State courts for the enforcement of the Embargo Acts;[707] and the act of March 3, 1815,[708] vested in State or county courts within or directly adjoining a federal tax-collection district cognizant "of all complaints, suits and prosecutions for taxes, duties, fines, penalties, and forfeitures."
Retreat From This Practice
The indifference, however, of the State courts in New England to the Embargo Acts, the later hostility of courts in the northern States to the Fugitive Slave Act, and the refusal of courts in other States to administer federal law on the general principle that the courts of no nation are bound to enforce the penal laws of another,[709] all combined to produce strong sentiments against the use of State courts to administer federal law. These sentiments came in time to be incorporated in dissenting opinions,[710] and in 1842 in Prigg v. Pennsylvania[711] the Court definitely ruled that the States could not be compelled to enforce federal law. However, it was later held that this ruling did not prevent Congress from authorizing State courts to administer federal law or the action taken by them, if they choose to do so, from being valid.[712]
Resumption of the Practice
Near the end of the nineteenth century and afterwards Congress resumed its earlier practice of vesting concurrently the enforcement of federally created rights in the State and federal courts. The administration of Indian lands and the determination of rights to inherit allotted lands[713] marked the beginning of the restoration of the use of State courts to apply federal law, and the Federal Employers' Liability Act of 1908[714] carried the practice further, not only by vesting concurrent jurisdiction in suits arising under the act, in State courts but also in prohibiting the removal of cases begun in State courts to the federal courts. Soon afterwards the Connecticut courts in a compensation case applied the State's common law rules of liability contrary to the federal act and held that Congress could not require a State court to grant a remedy which local law did not permit. The Connecticut courts further held that enforcement of the federal act was contrary to the public policy of the State.[715] This decision was overruled in the Second Employers' Liability Cases,[716] where it was held on the basis of national supremacy that rights arising under the act can be enforced "as of right, in the courts of the States when their jurisdiction, as prescribed by local laws, is adequate to the occasion." Subsequently, the Supreme Court has held that the rights created under this statute cannot be defeated by forms of local practice and that it is the duty of the Supreme Court to construe allegations in a complaint asserting a right under the liability act in order to determine whether a State court has denied a right of trial guaranteed by Congress.[717]