The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Usually considered one of the most consequential amendments, it addresses citizenship rights and equal protection under the law and was proposed in response to issues related to formerly enslaved Americans following the American Civil War. The amendment was bitterly contested, particularly by the states of the defeated Confederacy, which were forced to ratify it in order to regain representation in Congress. The amendment, particularly its first section, is one of the most litigated parts of the Constitution, forming the basis for landmark Supreme Court decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954) regarding racial segregation, Roe v. Wade (1973) regarding abortion, Bush v. Gore (2000) regarding the 2000 presidential election, Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) regarding same-sex marriage, and Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard regarding race-based college admissions. The amendment limits the actions of all state and local officials, and also those acting on behalf of such officials.
The Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883), were a group of five landmark cases in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments did not empower Congress to outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals. The holding that the Thirteenth Amendment did not empower the federal government to punish racist acts done by private citizens would be overturned by the Supreme Court in the 1968 case Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co. The Fourteenth Amendment not applying to private entities, however, is still valid precedent to this day. Although the Fourteenth Amendment-related decision has never been overturned, in the 1964 case of Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, the Supreme Court held that Congress could prohibit racial discrimination by private actors under the Commerce Clause, though that and other loose interpretations of the Clause to expand federal power have been subject to criticism.
United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court which held that "a child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicile and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China", automatically became a U.S. citizen at birth. This decision established an important precedent in its interpretation of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
In the law of the United States, diversity jurisdiction is a form of subject-matter jurisdiction that gives United States federal courts the power to hear lawsuits that do not involve a federal question. For a federal court to have diversity jurisdiction over a lawsuit, two conditions must be met. First, there must be "diversity of citizenship" between the parties, meaning the plaintiffs must be citizens of different U.S. states than the defendants. Second, the lawsuit's "amount in controversy" must be more than $75,000. If a lawsuit does not meet these two conditions, federal courts will normally lack the jurisdiction to hear it unless it involves a federal question, and the lawsuit would need to be heard in state court instead.
The Erie doctrine is a fundamental legal doctrine of civil procedure in the United States which mandates that a federal court called upon to resolve a dispute not directly implicating a federal question must apply state substantive law.
Amount in controversy is a term used in civil procedure to denote the amount at stake in a lawsuit, in particular in connection with a requirement that persons seeking to bring a lawsuit in a particular court must be suing for a certain minimum amount before that court may hear the case.
Louisville & Nashville Railroad Company v. Mottley, 211 U.S. 149 (1908), was a United States Supreme Court decision that held that under the existing statutory scheme, federal question jurisdiction could not be predicated on a plaintiff's anticipation that the defendant would raise a federal statute as a defense. Instead, such jurisdiction can only arise from a complaint by the plaintiff that the defendant has directly violated some provision of the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States. This reading of the federal question jurisdiction statute is now known as the well-pleaded complaint rule.
In law and conflict of laws, domicile is relevant to an individual's "personal law", which includes the law that governs a person's status and their property. It is independent of a person's nationality. Although a domicile may change from time to time, a person has only one domicile, or residence, at any point in their life, no matter what their circumstances. Domicile is distinct from habitual residence, where there is less focus on future intent.
In the United States, removal jurisdiction allows a defendant to move a civil action or criminal case filed in a state court to the United States district court in the federal judicial district in which the state court is located. A federal statute governs removal.
Burger King v. Rudzewicz, 471 U.S. 462 (1985), is a notable case in United States civil procedure that came before the Supreme Court of the United States addressing personal jurisdiction.
Owen Equipment & Erection Co. v. Kroger, 437 U.S. 365 (1978), is a case that was decided by the United States Supreme Court regarding the civil procedure subject of ancillary jurisdiction.
World-Wide Volkswagen Corp v. Woodson, 444 U.S. 286 (1980), is a United States Supreme Court case involving strict products liability, personal injury and various procedural issues and considerations. The 1980 opinion, written by Justice Byron White, is included in the first-year civil procedure curriculum at nearly every American law school for its focus on personal jurisdiction.
Caterpillar Inc. v. Lewis, 519 U.S. 61 (1996), held that federal jurisdiction predicated on diversity of citizenship can be sustained even if there did not exist complete diversity at the time of removal to federal court, so long as complete diversity exists at the time the district court enters judgment.
Professional corporations or professional service corporation are those corporate entities for which many corporation statutes make special provision, regulating the use of the corporate form by licensed professionals such as attorneys, architects, engineers, public accountants and physicians. The general category of the PC or PSC can be as S-corporation, C-corporation, or LLC, but with subcategorization as a PC or PSC. Legal regulations applying to professional corporations typically differ in important ways from those applying to other corporations. Unlike a traditional corporation, operation as a professional corporation does not insulate a professional for personal liability for her own negligence or malpractice. The principal reason why groups of professions choose to organize as a professional corporation is that, unlike a general partnership, an owner is not personally liable for the negligence or malpractice of other owners. In some states a limited liability partnership offer the same benefit and thus should be considered as a possible business entity by professionals who are forming a business.
Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Allapattah Services, Inc., 545 U.S. 546 (2005), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that 28 U.S.C. § 1367 permits supplemental jurisdiction over joined claims that do not individually meet the amount-in-controversy requirements of § 1332, provided that at least one claim meets the amount-in-controversy requirements.
Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, 407 U.S. 551 (1972), was a United States Supreme Court ruling that the passing out of anti-war leaflets at the Lloyd Center in Portland, Oregon, was an infringement on property rights. This differed from Marsh v. Alabama (1946) and Amalgamated Food Employees Union v. Logan Valley Plaza (1968) in that Marsh had the attributes of a municipality and Logan Valley related to picketing a particular store, while the current case, the distribution of leaflets, is unrelated to any activity in the property.
Boschetto v. Hansing, 539 F.3d 1011 is a diversity jurisdiction case brought by California resident, Paul Boschetto ("Boschetto") against certain private corporations with their principal place of business in Wisconsin. The case involved the determination of the question whether the sale of an item via the internet consumer-to-consumer trading portal, eBay, by the defendants in Wisconsin to the plaintiff in California, was sufficient to confer personal jurisdiction over a non-resident defendant in the buyer's forum state. At the first instance, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California decided against Boschetto and held that a lone “eBay sale consummated with a California purchaser, was insufficient to establish jurisdiction over any of the defendants.” Boschetto appealed against the decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The appellate court affirmed the decision of the district court and denied relief to Boschetto. The Court became the first federal appellate court to address whether personal jurisdiction in a forum state could be established when an out-of-state resident makes use of an intermediary website accessible by forum-state citizens.
Daimler AG v. Bauman, 571 U.S. 117 (2014), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court answered whether an American court may exercise jurisdiction over a foreign company based on the fact that a subsidiary of the company acts on its behalf in the jurisdictional state. The court held that an American company cannot be sued for conduct occurring outside the United States and American courts do not have jurisdiction of such a claim.
Americold Realty Trust v. ConAgra Foods, Inc., 577 U.S. ___ (2016), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States clarified rules for determining whether a federal court may exercise diversity jurisdiction in cases involving unincorporated organizations. The case began as a contract dispute between food producers and a warehouse owner when millions of tons of stored food were destroyed in a warehouse fire. A federal trial court initially ruled in favor of the warehouse owner, but on appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled that the federal district court may not have had jurisdiction. The Tenth Circuit held that the warehouse owner, a real estate investment trust ("REIT"), should be treated as an unincorporated organization and the district court should not be allowed to exercise diversity jurisdiction without examining the citizenship of the members of the real estate investment trust. The warehouse owner appealed to the Supreme Court, which granted certiorari to resolve a circuit split "regarding the citizenship of unincorporated entities."
Home Depot U. S. A., Inc. v. Jackson, 587 U.S. ___ (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case which determined that a third-party defendant to a counterclaim submitted in a state-court civil action cannot remove their case to federal court. The Court explained, in a 5–4 decision, that although a third-party counterclaim defendant is a "defendant to a claim," removal can only be performed by the defendant to a "civil action." And this holds true even when the counterclaim is in the form of a class action. The Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 permits removal by "any defendant to a class action" but this does not extend removal rights to a third-party counterclaim defendant because they are not a defendant to the original case.
