Article IV, Section 1 — Full Faith and Credit Clause

ArtIV.S1.1 Overview of Full Faith and Credit Clause

The Constitution’s federalist structure allows each state to maintain its own government.¹ This structure creates a risk that multiple states will exercise their powers over the same issue or dispute, leading to confusion and uncertainty.² The Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause mitigates that risk by adjusting the states’ interrelationships.³ The Clause requires each state to give “Full Faith and Credit” to “the public Acts” of “every other State,” such as other states’ statutes.⁴ The Clause also requires states to give “Full Faith and Credit” to the “Records[ ] and judicial Proceedings of every other State.”⁵

The Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Clause has shifted over time.⁶ The Court has settled on a doctrinal framework that treats out-of-state court judgments differently from out-of-state laws.⁷ Whereas the modern Court generally requires states to give out-of-state judgments conclusive effect, states have more freedom to apply their own laws in their own courts, so long as they do not close their courts completely to claims based on other states’ laws.⁸

The Clause also authorizes Congress to enact “general Laws” that “prescribe the Manner in which [states’] Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.”⁹ Congress has invoked this authority several times, such as to require federal and territorial courts to apply the same full faith and credit principles as state courts.¹⁰ However, the Supreme Court has not yet considered where the outer boundaries of that power lie.¹¹

Litigants frequently ask state judges to enforce judgments entered by other states’ courts, such as judgments for monetary damages.¹² Those judges must decide whether to honor that judgment—and, if so, what legal effect the judgment will have. In addition, the Full Faith and Credit Clause requires states to recognize other states’ “public Acts,” such as statutes.¹³ This language has raised questions regarding how state courts must treat other states’ laws. Besides the question of which state’s laws a court must apply when two statutes conflict, the Court has also considered whether a state court must entertain causes of action based on other states’ laws. The Court has interpreted the Clause to require states to open their courts to claims based on other states’ laws under various circumstances.¹⁴

Whereas the Full Faith and Credit Clause’s first sentence mandates that “Full Faith and Credit . . . be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State,” its second sentence authorizes Congress to “prescribe . . . the Effect” of “such Acts, Records, and Proceedings.”¹⁵ The relationship between these two sentences raises interpretive questions. Because the first sentence already requires states to give out-of-state acts and proceedings full faith and credit, the Framers’ reasons for authorizing Congress to specify the effect of those acts and proceedings are unclear.¹⁶ Nor is it clear whether the Clause’s second sentence empowers Congress to enact legislation allowing states to refuse to give effect to particular categories of acts, records, and proceedings.¹⁷ Congress has seldom invoked its legislative authority under the Clause and thus has rarely tested that power’s potential limits.¹⁸ As a result, the scope of Congress’s powers under the Clause remains unsettled.¹⁹

ArtIV.S1.2 Historical Background on Full Faith and Credit Clause

Before the Constitution’s ratification, English and colonial courts struggled with how to treat judgments from other sovereigns’ courts.¹ While some courts held that judgments from other jurisdictions should have conclusive effect in other courts, others held that such judgments were only presumptively binding.² The Articles of Confederation attempted to address this uncertainty by providing that “[f]ull faith and credit shall be given in each of these states to the records, acts, and judicial proceedings of the courts and magistrates of every other state.”³ Nevertheless, it remained unclear whether the Articles of Confederation merely required courts to accept other states’ records as evidence, or if it instead required courts to afford such records conclusive effect.⁴

When the Framers decided to include a full faith and credit provision in the Constitution, they debated whether and how it should differ from the Articles of Confederation. For instance, whereas the Articles only granted full faith and credit to the “records, acts, and judicial proceedings” of “courts and magistrates,”⁵ the Framers decided to extend full faith and credit to legislative acts as well.⁶

The Framers also debated whether to empower Congress to pass legislation governing the authentication, execution, and effect of out-of-state acts.⁷ While some Framers advocated giving such acts, records, and proceedings binding effect as an unalterable constitutional command,⁸ others supported letting Congress prescribe the effect that acts, records, and proceedings would have in other states.⁹ The Framers ultimately chose the latter option.¹⁰ The Framers also debated the scope of Congress’s power to pass such laws. Some Framers proposed to authorize Congress to determine the effect of out-of-state judgments only, fearing that allowing Congress to prescribe the effect of out-of-state statutes would usurp states’ authority.¹¹ Others argued that unless Congress could prescribe the effect of other states’ nonjudicial acts, the Full Faith and Credit Clause would have no meaningful effect.¹² Over several dissenting votes, the Framers authorized Congress to prescribe the effect of states’ legislative acts as well as states’ judgments.¹³

The Framers also considered whether to require Congress to legislate regarding the authentication and effect of states’ acts, records, and proceedings, or whether to merely allow Congress to pass such laws.¹⁴ The Framers ultimately selected the latter option, though the Convention records do not explicitly specify why the Framers did so.¹⁵

Finally, the Framers deliberated whether to require states to give full faith and credit to other states’ acts, records, and proceedings versus encouraging states to do so.¹⁶ The Framers ultimately selected the former option.¹⁷ The Convention records do not reveal why the Framers made that choice, and scholars have debated whether the Framers intended that choice to have any substantive effect.¹⁸

The Full Faith and Credit Clause provoked little to no opposition or discussion during the ratification debates.¹⁹ In the Federalist Papers, James Madison described the Clause’s grant of congressional authority to legislate regarding out-of-state acts, records, and judicial proceedings’ authentication and effect as “an evident and valuable improvement on” the Articles of Confederation’s full faith and credit provision.²⁰ Madison thus maintained that Congress’s authority under the Clause would amount to “a very convenient instrument of justice” that would “be particularly beneficial on the borders of contiguous States.”²¹

ArtIV.S1.3.1 Early Precedent on Full Faith and Credit Clause

After the Full Faith and Credit Clause’s ratification, jurists debated whether states only needed to accept out-of-state judgments as evidence in judicial proceedings, or if they needed to give out-of-state judgments conclusive effect instead.¹ The Supreme Court reached the latter conclusion in Mills v. Duryee, holding that states ordinarily cannot reexamine an out-of-state judgment’s merits.² The Court reasoned that if “judgments of the state Courts” were “considered prima facie evidence only,” the Full Faith and Credit Clause “would be utterly unimportant and illusory,” as “[t]he common law would give such judgments precisely the same effect.”³

The legal basis for the Mills Court’s ruling was not self-evident. As another chapter of this treatise explains, the First Congress passed a statute requiring “every court within the United States” to give “faith and credit” to properly authenticated judicial records and proceedings.⁴ It is unclear whether the Mills Court meant that the Constitution itself requires state courts to give conclusive effect to out-of-state judgments, or that the full faith and credit statute mandated that result instead.⁵ The answer to that question has significant practical consequences: If the Constitution itself requires states to give out-of-state judgments conclusive effect, then Congress may lack the power to modify that rule legislatively.⁶ Although Mills contains language supporting either interpretation,⁷ the Court apparently construed Mills as an interpretation of the full faith and credit statute from 1813 to 1887.⁸

The early Court nonetheless recognized limited circumstances in which states could disregard out-of-state judgments. In M’Elmoyle v. Cohen, the Court held that a state need not enforce another state’s judgment if the first state’s statute of limitations has expired.⁹ In D’Arcy v. Ketchum, the Court ruled that if a state court renders a judgment against a defendant whom the plaintiff did not properly serve with process, other states need not give that judgment full faith and credit.¹⁰ And in Thompson v. Whitman, the Court held that a state need not honor an out-of-state judgment from a court that lacked jurisdiction to issue it.¹¹

ArtIV.S1.3.2 Modern Doctrine on Full Faith and Credit Clause

The Supreme Court reinterpreted the Full Faith and Credit Clause in Chicago & Alton Railroad v. Wiggins Ferry Co., in which the Court indicated that the Clause itself, not just the statute Congress passed to implement the Clause, compelled its holding in Mills requiring states to give out-of-state judgments conclusive effect.¹ Cases following Chicago & Alton Railroad similarly characterized the Clause itself as imposing this requirement, often without mentioning the full faith and credit statute.² The Court did not explain why it reconceptualized Mills’s holding as a constitutional command rather than a legislative mandate.³

Thus, under the Court’s current interpretation of the Clause, courts ordinarily must give an out-of-state judgment the same effect it would have in the state that issued it.⁴ A court may not disregard an out-of-state judgment merely “because it disagrees with the reasoning underlying the judgment or deems it to be wrong on the merits”; the Clause “precludes any inquiry into the merits of the cause of action, the logic or consistency of the decision, or the validity of the legal principles on which the judgment is based.”⁵ Nor may state courts decline to enforce other states’ judgments for public policy reasons.⁶

Still, the modern Court recognizes limited circumstances in which a state may refuse to enforce an out-of-state judgment.⁷ For example, a state need not honor a judgment if the rendering court lacked jurisdiction to enter it.⁸ A court’s power to scrutinize another court’s jurisdiction is limited, however.⁹ The court must ordinarily presume that the issuing court had jurisdiction unless the judicial record or other evidence reveals a jurisdictional defect.¹⁰ If the parties in the first action litigated whether the rendering court had jurisdiction, and the first court answered that question affirmatively, the second court must accept that conclusion.¹¹

Because the Full Faith and Credit Clause ordinarily requires states to give out-of-state judgments the same effect as the states that issued them,¹² whether a judgment has conclusive effect depends on whether the issuing court would regard the judgment as “final.” While some states hold that a judgment is final for full faith and credit purposes even when it is pending on appeal, other states hold that a judgment is not final until the appellate process has concluded.¹³

ArtIV.S1.4.1 Early Doctrine on State Law on Full Faith and Credit Clause

While the Supreme Court considered the Full Faith and Credit Clause’s applicability to public acts several times during the early twentieth century,¹ its opinion in Bradford Electric Light Co. v. Clapper proved especially significant.² In Clapper, a Vermont resident who worked for a Vermont company died while working in New Hampshire.³ His widow sued his employer in a New Hampshire court under New Hampshire’s employers’ liability statute.⁴ The employer argued that the Full Faith and Credit Clause required the New Hampshire court to apply Vermont’s worker’s compensation law.⁵ The Supreme Court explained that the Clause leaves “room for some play of conflicting policies,” and “does not require the enforcement of every right conferred by a statute of another state.”⁶ The Court thus indicated that courts should balance each state’s interests when determining which of two competing state statutes to apply.⁷ Because Vermont had stronger interests in the dispute than New Hampshire, the Court ruled that Vermont law applied.⁸

The Supreme Court refined Clapper’s balancing approach in Alaska Packers Ass’n v. Industrial Accident Commission of California.⁹ In that case, a California company executed an employment contract in California with a nonresident alien from Mexico.¹⁰ The contract provided that the company would transport the worker to Alaska to perform seasonal work, and then return him to California to be paid.¹¹ The parties agreed in their contract to be bound by Alaska’s worker’s compensation law in the event the worker was injured.¹² After the worker was injured in Alaska, California’s Industrial Accident Commission awarded him compensation under California’s worker’s compensation statute.¹³ The employer argued that, by applying California law, the Commission had denied Alaska law full faith and credit.¹⁴ Noting that requiring courts to apply other states’ statutes whenever they conflict with the home state’s laws would produce the “absurd result” that no state could apply its own laws in its own courts, the Alaska Packers Court rejected the employer’s argument.¹⁵ Although the Court reaffirmed Clapper’s holding that courts should balance states’ competing interests when deciding which of two states’ laws to apply, it added a new presumption in favor of states applying their own laws.¹⁶ Reasoning that California had a strong interest in providing a remedy for injured workers within its borders,¹⁷ the Court let California apply its own laws to the dispute.¹⁸

That same year, the Court considered whether the Clause required states to entertain causes of action based on other states’ laws. In Broderick v. Rosner, New York’s Superintendent of Banks sued various stockholders in New Jersey under New York’s shareholder liability statute.¹⁹ The New Jersey courts ruled that the Superintendent could not maintain a lawsuit in New Jersey based on another state’s shareholder liability laws.²⁰ The Supreme Court held that the Full Faith and Credit Clause required the New Jersey courts to entertain the suit.²¹ The Court reasoned that permitting states to deny jurisdiction to hear cases based on other states’ laws would allow states to “escape [their] constitutional obligations” to give other states’ public acts full faith and credit.²²

The Court again considered the Clause’s application to out-of-state statutes in John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co. v. Yates.²³ In Yates, a man bought a life insurance contract in New York, where he resided with his wife.²⁴ After he died, his widow moved to Georgia and sued to enforce the insurance policy in a Georgia court.²⁵ The Georgia courts refused to apply a New York law that gave the insurance company a meritorious defense to the widow’s claim.²⁶ The Supreme Court ruled that the Georgia courts needed to give the New York law full faith and credit.²⁷ Notably, the Court did not mention or apply Alaska Packers’ holding that courts must balance states’ competing interests when deciding whether to apply another state’s statute.²⁸ Instead, the Court reasoned that the case presented “no occurrence, nothing done, to which the law of Georgia could apply” because “[t]he contract of insurance was made, and the death of the insured occurred in,” New York.²⁹

ArtIV.S1.4.2 Modern Doctrine on State Law on Full Faith and Credit Clause

The Court reinterpreted the Full Faith and Credit Clause in Pacific Employers Insurance Co. v. Industrial Accident Commission.¹ In that case, a Massachusetts resident was injured while working for a Massachusetts company in California.² The California Industrial Accident Commission awarded the employee compensation under California’s worker’s compensation law.³ The employer’s insurer challenged the award, claiming that California violated the Clause by applying its own law instead of Massachusetts’.⁴ The Pacific Employers Court opined that “the very nature of the federal union of states, to which are reserved some of the attributes of sovereignty, precludes resort to the full faith and credit clause as the means for compelling a state to substitute the statutes of other states for its own statutes dealing with a subject matter concerning which it is competent to legislate.”⁵ Quoting Alaska Packers, the Court explained that rigidly requiring states to apply other states’ statutes in the event of a conflict would create “the absurd result” that a state’s laws would apply in other states’ courts, but not its own courts.⁶ However, unlike in Clapper and Alaska Packers, the Court did not balance the states’ competing interests to determine which law applied.⁷ Instead, the Court declared that the Full Faith and Credit Clause does not “enable one state to legislate for the other or to project its laws across state lines so as to preclude the other from prescribing for itself the legal consequences of acts within it.”⁸ The Court thus upheld the California award.⁹

Since Pacific Employers, the Court has repeatedly reaffirmed that courts should no longer balance states’ interests when evaluating whether to apply another state’s laws.¹⁰ The Court has stated that it abandoned the interest-balancing approach because there are no clear standards for assessing which state’s interest is weightier in a particular case.¹¹ Thus, subject to the exceptions discussed below, “a State need not ‘substitute the statutes of other states for its own statutes dealing with a subject matter concerning which it is competent to legislate.’”¹² For instance, the Court ruled in Sun Oil Co. v. Wortman that a state may apply its own statute of limitations to claims governed by another state’s laws, because states are “competent to legislate” procedural rules to govern suits in their own courts.¹³

Nonetheless, the Court has recognized limits on a state’s discretion to apply its own law. For example, in Franchise Tax Board v. Hyatt (Franchise Tax Board II), a Nevada court awarded damages against a California agency that exceeded the damages Nevada would award in a similar suit against its own agencies.¹⁴ The Court explained that the Full Faith and Credit Clause forbids states from applying “a special rule of law that evinces a ‘policy of hostility’” towards other states.¹⁵ Because the Nevada court did not “appl[y] the principles of Nevada law ordinarily applicable to suits against Nevada’s own agencies,” but instead “applied a special rule of law applicable only in lawsuits against its sister States, such as California,” the Supreme Court held that the Nevada court’s decision “reflect[ed] a constitutionally impermissible ‘policy of hostility’” toward other states and thus violated the Clause.¹⁶ While the Court suggested that policy considerations might “justify the application of a special rule of Nevada law that discriminate[d] against its sister States” in a different case, Nevada had not offered “sufficient policy considerations” in Franchise Tax Board II.¹⁷

Nor may states close their courts to claims based on other states’ laws. For instance, in Hughes v. Fetter, a Wisconsin resident died in an automobile collision with another Wisconsin resident that occurred in Illinois.¹⁸ The decedent’s administrator—who was also a Wisconsin resident—sued the other driver and his insurer in a Wisconsin state court, asserting claims based on Illinois’ wrongful death statute.¹⁹ The Wisconsin court ruled that Wisconsin’s wrongful death statute—which only provided a cause of action for deaths occurring in Wisconsin—established a public policy barring Wisconsin courts from hearing lawsuits based on other states’ wrongful death laws.²⁰ Building on its earlier decision in Broderick v. Rosner,²¹ the Supreme Court reversed, holding that Wisconsin violated the Full Faith and Credit Clause by refusing to hear the administrator’s claim.²² The Court emphasized that Wisconsin had not merely opted to apply its own wrongful death statute to the plaintiff ’s claims, which likely would be permissible.²³ Rather, Wisconsin had wholly “close[d] the doors of its courts to the cause of action created by the Illinois wrongful death act.”²⁴ By doing so, Wisconsin contravened “the strong unifying principle embodied in the Full Faith and Credit Clause looking toward maximum enforcement in each state of the obligations or rights created or recognized by the statutes of sister states.”²⁵

ArtIV.S1.5.1 Generally Applicable Federal Law on Full Faith and Credit Clause

Congress first invoked the Clause in 1790 to pass legislation establishing methods for authenticating other states’ acts, records, and proceedings.¹ The 1790 Act provided that if a litigant duly authenticated a judicial record or proceeding, then “every court within the United States” would have to grant that record or proceeding the same “faith and credit” as it would “have by law or usage in the courts of the state from whence the said records” were taken.² By applying this command to “every court within the United States,” Congress required federal courts to give state judgments full faith and credit, even though the Full Faith and Credit Clause only applies to states.³ The 1790 Act, however, only purported to grant “faith and credit” to “records and judicial proceedings;” it did not list legislative acts among the legal documents entitled to full faith and credit.⁴

Congress amended the 1790 Act in 1804.⁵ The 1804 Act added provisions governing the authentication and effect of “records and exemplifications of office books, which are or may be kept in any public office of any state, not appertaining to a court.”⁶ Additionally, whereas the 1790 Act only applied to state acts, records, and proceedings, the 1804 Act expanded the statute to also apply to U.S. territories’ acts, records, and proceedings.⁷ However, like the 1790 Act, the 1804 Act did not explicitly require states to give faith and credit to other states’ legislative acts.⁸

The full faith and credit statute remained essentially unchanged until 1948, when Congress enacted the current Full Faith and Credit Act.⁹ Like its predecessors, the Full Faith and Credit Act prescribes methods by which one may authenticate an act, record, or proceeding of a state, territory, or possession.¹⁰ But unlike its predecessors, the Full Faith and Credit Act requires state and territorial courts to give “full faith and credit” not only to other jurisdictions’ judicial records and proceedings, but also to legislative acts.¹¹ The Act’s legislative history suggests that Congress did not intend that change to alter the Supreme Court’s prevailing rule that states generally may apply their own laws in their own courts.¹² Read literally, however, the Act’s text suggests that courts must give other states’ laws conclusive effect, which would modify that rule substantially.¹³ The Supreme Court has not adopted that literal interpretation of the Act, however.¹⁴

Congress has not amended the Full Faith and Credit Act since 1948.¹⁵ Thus, under current law, “all courts” in the United States—including federal courts—must “treat a state court judgment with the same respect that it would receive in the courts of the rendering state.”¹⁶ Thus, the Act ordinarily precludes parties from relitigating issues that other courts have adjudicated.¹⁷

ArtIV.S1.5.2 Specifically Applicable Federal Law on Full Faith and Credit Clause

Congress has also passed full faith and credit statutes governing specific categories of acts, records, and proceedings.¹ For example, the Parental Kidnaping Prevention Act (PKPA) extends full faith and credit to child custody determinations.² Section 40221(a) of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 requires states to give certain out-of-state protection orders full faith and credit.³ And the Full Faith and Credit for Child Support Orders Act governs the enforcement of out-of-state child support orders.⁴

Notably, each of these statutes requires states to give full faith and credit to particular acts, records, or proceedings. Congress has rarely enacted legislation purporting to allow states to not honor out-of-state acts or judgments.⁵ For instance, Section 2(a) of the Defense of Marriage Act provided that “no State, territory, or possession of the United States, or Indian tribe” would “be required to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State, territory, possession or tribe respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such other State, territory, possession, or tribe, or a right or claim arising from such relationship.”⁶ Scholars debated whether the Full Faith and Credit Clause authorized Congress to allow states to disregard out-of-state marriages in this fashion.⁷ The Supreme Court mooted this debate when it held in Obergefell v. Hodges “that there is no lawful basis for a State to refuse to recognize a lawful same-sex marriage performed in another State on the ground of its same-sex character.”⁸ Because the Obergefell Court based its ruling on the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court left questions regarding Congress’s power under the Full Faith and Credit Clause unanswered.⁹ Thus, the boundaries of Congress’s authority to prescribe the effect of state acts, records, and proceedings under the Clause remain unsettled.¹⁰