Revising Our “Common Intellectual Heritage”: Federal and State Courts in Our Federal System

Judith Resnik*

This Essay pays tribute to Daniel Meltzer’s insight that, to the extent “lawyers have a common intellectual heritage, the federal courts are its primary source.” I do so by analyzing how that heritage is made and remade, as political forces press Congress to deploy federal courts to protect a wide array of interests and state courts absorb the bulk of litigation.
The heritage that Meltzer celebrated and to which he contributed was the outcome of twentieth-century social movements that focused on the federal courts as hospitable venues, serving as vivid sources of rights and remedies. A competing heritage has since emerged, as the Supreme Court shaped new doctrines constricting judicial powers and rendering courts unavailable and unavailing.
Despite the Court’s reluctance to welcome claimants, Congress continues to endow the federal courts with new authority and significant funds. But what the federal government has thus far ignored are the needs of state courts, where 100 million cases are filed annually and states struggle to honor constitutional commitments to open courts and rights to counsel for criminal defendants.
Once state courts come into focus, two other and competing understanding of courts come to the fore. One merits the term “enabling courts,” as judges aim to equip litigants with lawyers and resources for conflicts related to families, housing, and health. From “Civil Gideon” movements and self-help forms to drug and reentry courts, new initiatives underscore the goals of using courts to be responsive to social needs. But another vector of court activities falls under the nomenclature of “exploitive courts,” using discriminatory fines, fees, and threats of jail for those unable to pay to turn courts into profit centers to augment localities’ budgets.
Inequality and racial tensions are the leitmotifs of this decade; it is neither surprising nor inappropriate that these issues are played out in public courts as well as in electoral politics. But these very inequalities counsel the need to develop a new intellectual heritage, premised on the interdependencies of state and federal courts, sharing the common purpose of fulfilling constitutional obligations in this democratic polity to enable access to their public services.

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© 2016 Judith Resnik.

*Thanks are due to Dennis Curtis, Kristin Collins, Richard Fallon, Abbe Gluck, Tara Grove, Vicki Jackson, and Patricia Moore for reviewing drafts; to Sean Farhang, Richard Jaffe, Dan Cunningham, David Insigna, Jennifer Gibson, and to Yale Law Librarian Michael Vanderheidjen for research advice; to the co-panelists at the AALS meeting at which this draft was given; to Yale Law students David Chen, Kyle Edwards, John Giammatteo, Kate Huddleston, Marianna Mao, Adam Margulies, Katie Munyan, Heather Richard, and Emily Wanger for careful, insightful, sophisticated, and tireless research; and to Bonnie Posick for expert editorial guidance. As others have discussed, Daniel Meltzer knew of the plans for this program before he died. I appreciate this opportunity to discuss the degree to which I, like so many others, am lucky to have benefitted from his insights and his intellectual generosity. As we mourned his absence at the symposium where we studied in his honor, it was plain that we continue to have much to learn from, and in some senses with, him.