Opinion ID: 1423926
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: federal common law

Text: In Texas the U.S. Supreme Court established priority among multiple states attempting to take custody of or to escheat unclaimed intangible property. [9] The Court limited the states' power by setting guidelines that determine which of the competing states has a right to reach the property for custodial taking or escheat. The Court held that unclaimed property is subject to custodial taking or escheat only in the state of the owner's last known address. [10] If there is no record of that address, or if the last known address is in a state with no custodial taking or escheat laws, the property is subject to custodial taking only by the state of the holder's corporate domicile. [11] The Supremacy Clause [12] makes federal law the supreme law of the land and preempts conflicting state laws. [13] In Texas, the Court fashioned common-law norms  i.e., rules of non-statutory (judge-made) federal law of limited application to govern interstitially in an exclusively federal field. [14] This form of federal common law is in essence jurisprudence applied in the exercise of the U.S. Supreme Court's constitutional judicature when entertaining interstate disputes. Because in Texas the Court was fashioning substantive legal standards for an interstate dispute it is constitutionally authorized to settle and for a controversy that lies within the range of Congress' constitutional power to regulate by law, [15] the Court's declared common-law norms are binding on the States. States can no more override ... [federal] judicial rules validly fashioned than they can override Acts of Congress. [16] Oklahoma courts are hence bound by the federal law's jurisprudential exposition pronounced in Texas. [17]