FEDERAL INJUNCTION AGAINST PROCEEDINGS IN STATE COURTS: THE LIFE HISTORY OF A STATUTE

Authors

Edgar Noble Durfee, University of Michigan Law School
Robert L. Sloss, University of Michigan Law School

Abstract

The Judicial Code provides, in section 265, that "the writ of injunction shall not be granted by any court of the United States to stay proceedings in any court of a State," except where authorized by the Bankruptcy Act. This provision, minus the bankruptcy exception, first appeared in an act of 1793, amending the Judiciary Act of 1789. We know next to nothing of the parliamentary history of this statute. We do, however, know that the basic political issue in the framing of the Constitution was that of states' rights, the question how far the new government should be a nation, how far a federation of sovereign states, and we know that ratification was achieved with the aid (perhaps could not have been achieved without the aid) of an understanding that there should be immediate amendment by way of limitation upon the powers of the central government. We also know that the first Congress proposed, and the states promptly ratified, the first ten Amendments, all restrictive in character, five of them aimed at the judiciary, and that, in the deliberations of this Congress upon the first Judiciary Act, the question of states' rights was to the fore. We also know that the third Congress framed the Eleventh Amendment, which privileged the states from suit in the federal courts, and that this measure was being formulated at the moment the injunction statute was passed. With this political -setting, we are justified in assuming that Congress, without thinking the matter through to the end, meant precisely that no injunction should be granted to stay any proceedings in state courts.

Recommended Citation

Edgar N. Durfee & Robert L. Sloss, FEDERAL INJUNCTION AGAINST PROCEEDINGS IN STATE COURTS: THE LIFE HISTORY OF A STATUTE, 30 Mich. L. Rev. 1145 (1932).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol30/iss8/2