Federal Question

Federal Question

An issue directly involving the U.S. Constitution, federal statutes, or treaties between the United States and a foreign country.

Application of these kinds of law to particular cases or interpretation of the meanings of these laws is a power within the authority of the federal courts. The authority to hear lawsuits that turn on a point of federal law is called federal question jurisdiction. Under 28 U.S.C.A. § 1331 (1993), U.S. district courts "shall have original jurisdiction of all civil actions arising under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States." Unlike federal jurisdiction based upon Diversity of Citizenship under 28 U.S.C.A. § 1332 (Supp. 2003), federal question jurisdiction is not dependent on the parties meeting a prescribed amount in controversy.

Cross-references

Jurisdiction; Treaty.

West's Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

Federal question

n. one basis for filing a lawsuit in federal district court is that it is based on subjects enumerated in the U. S. Constitution or when a federal statute is involved. Thus, existence of such federal question gives the federal court jurisdiction.

Copyright © 1981-2005 by Gerald N. Hill and Kathleen T. Hill. All Right reserved.
References in periodicals archive ?
Casad, Personal Jurisdiction in Federal Question Cases, 70 Tex.
The topics are the structure of the federal judicial system, issues of justiciability, diversity of jurisdiction, federal question jurisdiction, supplemental jurisdiction, removal jurisdiction, personal jurisdiction in federal courts, venue, change of venue, multi-district litigation, dual federal-state judicial systems, the anti-injunction acts, the abstention doctrine, the 11th Amendment and state sovereign immunity, and applicable law in federal court: the Eirie Doctrine.
Potentially, Pullman abstention will have resulted in the chilling or silencing of constitutionally protected speech for an extended period of time while Grand Juror Doe bore the expense of years of litigation before her day in federal court to decide a federal question about the scope of the First Amendment.
[section] 1332, and second, that federal question jurisdiction exists under the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (the "Convention"), 9 U.S.C.
state statute of limitations in a federal question case, using language
To the extent that the Court sought to define judicial power by reference to the elements of diversity, and said nothing to foreclose federal question jurisdiction, the decision identifies an important fracture line in Article III, although we have some tidying up to do around the edges.
Against this backdrop, the Court's rules suggest that it might consider whether the case presents an important federal question, a lower court split, an error of law, a conflict with Supreme Court precedent, or other characteristics that may warrant certiorari.
Professors Doernberg and Mushlin may therefore be correct when they argue that under Skelly, "the sole type of declaratory judgment case qualifying for federal question jurisdiction is one in which the plaintiff would have had a coercive claim presenting a federal question." (55)
The United States, after 85 years, fought a civil war to settle the federal question. The Soviet Union, which was established in 1917, collapsed after 74 years, in 1991.
(48) That practice is based primarily on the jurisdictional statutes, which have never given the Court its constitutionally-permissible appellate diversity jurisdiction, and always either explicitly or by judicial inference have limited its review to federal questions in cases in which the federal question supports jurisdiction but issues of state law were also decided below.

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