Welcome to Civil Procedure. My name is Marin Levy and I'm a professor at Duke Law School. And we're going to be starting out by talking about jurisdiction. And that, of course, means personal jurisdiction and subject matter jurisdiction. Now, if you're thinking to yourself at this moment, "I don't actually remember a lot about these two subjects and, in fact, what little I remember, I'm not exactly remembering fondly," don't worry. We've got you covered. What we're going to be doing for the most part in our next unit is thinking about these different concepts and going over the basic rules and the key cases to support those rules.

Jurisdiction Analogy

Before we do any of that, I want to share with you a little analogy. It's kind of silly, a little bit cheesy, but hopefully it will underscore what these two concepts are really about, why they're so different from each other, and why it's so critical that a court have both in order to proceed with a given lawsuit. So bear with me on this one.

Let's imagine that a student comes to me and says, "Professor Levy, I'm really upset about my Civ Pro grade. Maybe the grade just wasn't calculated properly, and I'm really hoping you can look at it for me." So this is the kind of subject that I can take on. This is the kind of matter that I can, we would say, adjudicate, but I look at the student and I say, "I don't actually think you're my student. Do you even go to this law school?"

And the student says, "Well, no, actually, I go to a totally different law school, totally different state." This is someone I've never even met before. I wouldn't even have to tell you anything more for you to say that just doesn't sound right. And this is basically like me saying I don't have personal jurisdiction over this particular student. Without any connection to me, you can imagine I am basically a judge in a court in a forum state, without any connection to me, I don't have the authority to hear this person's claim. So again, even if they're bringing the kind of case that normally I could hear, I don't have the authority over them to decide how this is going to work out for that individual party.

Let's switch up our hypo a little bit. I have a student come to me, and happily, this is a student I know, this is definitely one of my students, goes to the law school where I teach, and the student says, "I'm really hoping you can help me with something, Professor. I'm really upset. I'm in the middle of a softball game right now and I think that the other side just cheated, and I really need you to go out there on the field and tell them that what they did was wrong and they have to lose the game." Again, I think without knowing a whole lot more, we would say I don't really have the authority to do that. This is my student and I might have authority over him or her in certain contexts, but I have no business as just a random Civ Pro professor to run out on the field right now and to say what I think should happen in a game.

Another way of putting that is, I don't have subject matter jurisdiction over this particular case. I don't have the authority to hear it. So, as a result, I'm afraid I can't step in at that point. Somebody else is going to have to decide that, say, the organizers of the softball league.

Let's try one more version of our hypo and bringing these two concepts together. Now let's imagine that a student comes to me, and this is a student that I have in class. And that student says, "I'm really unhappy about my Civ Pro grade. I think maybe there was a mistake in the calculation of the final score. I'm hoping you can look at it."

Now, I'm not so happy to have that come across my desk, but here's what we are happy about. That's a student that I have, so I have personal jurisdiction over him or her. And now that student is bringing up something that I have the authority to decide. I have subject matter jurisdiction over that case.

So, as a result, because I have both, I absolutely can proceed to adjudicate that matter. Just to drive this home, what we're thinking about is ensuring that a court have both personal jurisdiction, that's over the parties, subject matter jurisdiction, over the claims. A court absolutely has to have both in order for that lawsuit to proceed.

So hopefully we're feeling a little bit warmed up with these concepts. They're starting to come back to us just a little bit from 1L year. So now let's make this a little bit more formal and talk about the kind of definitions that we would see out of our casebooks.

Personal Jurisdiction (PJ)

Personal jurisdiction is about where, geographically, a given lawsuit's going to take place. That is, what state does the plaintiff get to bring this lawsuit in? And if we're going to put this in really serious terms, we could say it has to do with the power of the court to exercise what we call "coercive authority" over the parties to the case and their property. And to say that a court has personal jurisdiction over you is to say that the court has the power to determine your rights and liabilities.

And, in fact, it can even compel you to appear. And as we'll be talking about a little bit later on, if you don't appear, the court has the authority to enter a default judgment against you.

Subject Matter Jurisdiction (SMJ)

In contrast to all of that, subject matter jurisdiction is about a separate question, namely, which court system are we going to be in? That is, is a plaintiff going to file in state court or in federal court? And remember the key background point here is that federal courts can't just hear any old case, the same way that me as a Civ Pro professor, I can't hear any old dispute, say, about a softball league. From the Constitution, we know that federal courts have what we call "limited subject matter jurisdiction," which means that they can only hear cases involving certain kinds of questions or particular types of parties.

What types of questions or parties are we talking about? Well, here are the major ones that we're going to be covering together.

Federal Question

So first, a claim can come in if it qualifies under what we call "federal question jurisdiction," that is, if the claim arises under the Constitution or, say, a federal statute. And I just want to pause here and underscore, I think this is the most intuitive category. We generally would expect matters of federal law to be adjudicated in a federal court. So, if somebody is bringing a First Amendment claim, you would expect that's the kind of claim that's going to be heard in federal court. Makes sense.

Diversity + Amount in Controversy (AIC)

Second, a claim can come into federal court, even if it's purely a matter of state law, if it qualifies under diversity jurisdiction, meaning that the parties are, first, diverse, that is, that they're coming from different states, and second, that the amount in controversy, that is, the amount that the claims are worth, is above $75,000.

Okay, now, as a side note, this category at the outset might feel a little bit less like it makes sense, it's a little bit less intuitive, but as we're going to be talking about, there was at least initially a concern that folks from out of state might not get a fair shake in state court.

And so the thought was, if you have diverse citizens, you've a plaintiff and a defendant coming from different states, and if the case is important enough, when you're thinking about the dollar amount that's at stake, then those parties get to access what we think of as a neutral forum, namely, the federal courts.

Supplemental Jurisdiction

Finally, a claim can come into federal court under what we call "supplemental jurisdiction," so, that is, you could have a given claim that does not independently qualify to come into federal court on its own. It doesn't raise a federal question and, for whatever reason, it doesn't satisfy the requirements of diversity jurisdiction, but nevertheless, it can come in and kind of tag along if it's part of a case or controversy that has other claims that can independently qualify for federal jurisdiction.

So again, in that scenario, it may just be that the claim that we're talking about gets to come in, we get to supplement the court's subject matter jurisdiction and let them hear that claim as well.

Hypothetical

So that's a bit of an overview of what we're going to be covering, but before we get into those concepts a little bit more, I just want to bring up one more hypothetical. This is just to make everything more concrete and to stress the differences between personal jurisdiction and subject matter jurisdiction.

Let's imagine that we have our friends, Patty and Dave. They don't actually know each other yet, but they are about to meet in our hypothetical. So they're driving separately in New York and, unfortunately, they get into a car accident. Thankfully, no one is harmed. But, unfortunately, the car sustained pretty significant damage. So Patty now wants to sue Dave because she says the accident was caused by his negligence.

Which State?

So one of the first questions that Patty is going to have to address is where this lawsuit is going to take place. And the first part of that question is where geographically she's going to get to bring her suit.

So let's imagine that she's from Alaska. So she heads home after her trip to New York, which did not turn out as planned, and she decides, "You know what? I'd really like to bring my lawsuit here." It's really convenient for her to bring the lawsuit at her home in Alaska. She might even get to live at home while this is happening. Maybe she knows a good lawyer in town. So again, for her, it seems like it'd be really convenient if she could bring her lawsuit in her home state, Alaska.

But let's now pivot and look over at Dave. Let's imagine that Dave, now our defendant, is not from Alaska. In fact, we're going to say he's from North Carolina. And let's even imagine he's never been to Alaska. Maybe he couldn't even identify it on a map and he has zero ties to that state. Without knowing anything else at this point, we would think, "Gosh, it is really unfair if somehow Dave has to drop everything that he's doing and travel all the way to Alaska just to defend himself in this lawsuit." Happily, based on the facts as we've just described them, a court in Alaska would not have personal jurisdiction over him.

So that means a court would not be able to tell Dave just to drop what he's doing to get his butt over to Alaska to defend himself, because the court would not have coercive authority over him.

Let's imagine that Patty realizes all of this and she decides instead, she's going to bring her lawsuit in North Carolina, where Dave is from. And as we're going to be talking about, that's just fine because a court in North Carolina, where Dave is domiciled, absolutely would have personal jurisdiction over him.

So that's all to say that right at the beginning of a lawsuit, the plaintiff has to be thinking a lot about personal jurisdiction, and in particular, where there's going to be jurisdiction over that defendant.

State or Federal?

Having said all of that, we're not done because Patty faces a second question, which is, well, what kind of court does she want to file her lawsuit in? State or federal? So again, we're still thinking about North Carolina, we've picked our state. We have to think about which court system we're going to be in. Now, Patty thinks to herself, "Dave is from this state, he's from North Carolina, but I'm not. And I know a lot of the state judges are elected and I'm a little worried that maybe they're going to be biased in favor of Dave, because again, he's from this state, and I'm worried I might just not get that fair of a shake."

So, what is it that she wants? She wants to be in what she feels like is a more neutral forum. That would be the federal court right across the street. And if it turns out that her claim is for enough money, namely, it has to be for more than $75,000, because she and Dave are from different states, she might be able to do just that. She might be able to bring that lawsuit in federal court.

So again, this is all to say that at the very outset of a lawsuit, the plaintiff needs to figure out, first, where geographically she's going to bring that lawsuit. And that's going to be based on where a court will have personal jurisdiction over the parties.

And then second, she has to figure out, within that state, which court to bring that lawsuit in. Are we going to be in state court or federal court? And that ends up being a question of subject matter jurisdiction over the claim. So those are the topics we're going to be tackling next.