Opinion ID: 108017
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: state court remedies for federal rights

Text: Because this case arises from a state court, it presents special problems which the majority overlooks, and which suggests again the undesirability of deciding this case in the context of this ancient statute. In deciding that there is a right to recover damages in this case, the majority overlooks the complications involved by dint of the fact that a state court is being asked to provide a remedy for a federal right bottomed on a federal statute that itself has no remedial provisions. Implied remedies for federal rights are sometimes solely a matter of federal law [28] and other times dependent, either wholly or partially, upon state law. [29] Difficult and complex questions are involved in determining what remedies a state court must [30] or must not [31] provide in cases involving federal rights. [32] It should be noted that the majority's opinion, though perhaps deciding very little [33] only adds to the confusion already existing in this area. Section 1988 of Title 42, which the majority apparently thinks decides this case, is concerned with the remedial powers of federal district courts and it provides that the federal courts shall look to state law to find appropriate remedies when the applicable federal civil rights law is deficient in the provisions necessary to furnish suitable remedies . . . . But the majority turns this provision on its head by suggesting (1) that § 1988 creates a federal remedy, apart from state law, when the remedial provisions of a civil rights statute, like § 1982, are deficient; and (2) that § 1988 itself somehow imposes this federal remedy on the States. If § 1988 says anything at all relevant for this case, it suggests that in those cases where it is appropriate to cure remedial deficiencies of a federal civil rights statute by implication, this is to be done by looking to state law to see what remedies, consistent with federal policies, would be available there. By reason of these considerations, many of which could hardly have been foreseen at the time certiorari was granted, I would dismiss the writ in this case as improvidently granted.