Court Opinion

ID: 9478430
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:48:50.881803+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:25.584445
License: Public Domain

ALVIN B. RUBIN, Circuit Judge,
with whom JOHNSON, Circuit Judge, joins concurring (Circuit Judges BROWN and WILLIAMS join in part II):
I.
The court’s opinion follows settled doctrine and I therefore join in it.
II.
It is time, however, for Congress to reconsider the statute that we are obliged to follow, for it is no longer adequate to assure the protection of federal rights.
There can be little doubt that the LHWCA preempts state jurisdiction over suits involving failure to pay compensation under the Act.1 Yet we rely on state courts to enforce the employer’s federal right not to have this claim litigated in state court, stating that, if state courts do not protect that right, the employer may seek relief from the United States Supreme Court. While the state courts once had exclusive original jurisdiction over claims arising under federal law, federal-question jurisdiction is now vested in the federal district courts with appeal to the circuit courts of appeal. State trial and appellate courts are therefore no longer as familar with these questions as they were a century ago. The state court judgments in such cases are subject to final review by the Supreme Court, but this remedy is no longer available by appeal, for as a result of recent legislation virtually eliminating the Court’s mandatory appellate jurisdiction,2 litigants must seek relief by application to the Court for a writ. Such writs are only sparingly granted. In the 1987-88 term, which was typical, the Court granted only 267 writs, including the miscellaneous docket, and published only 259 opinions, including per curiams and memoranda. Given the other demands on the Court’s time, including the presentation to it each year of more than 4400 applications for writs, the number of *510cases in which state courts decide federal-preemption questions, and the even larger number in which federal courts abstain from deciding federal issues, again leaving final, now discretionary, review to the Supreme Court,3 the volume of litigation presented to the Court is now so large that the Court simply cannot adequately assure the protection of federal rights in those cases. Thus both in cases governed by the Anti-Injunction Act and in those controlled by rules requiring federal court abstention, the promised ultimate review by the Supreme Court is apt to be illusory. The remedy, of course, lies with Congress, or, in abstention cases, in reconsideration of the doctrinal rules by the Supreme Court.

. See Majority Opinion, supra, Footnote 7.

. Act of June 27, 1988, Pub.L. 100-352, §§ 3, 7, 102 Stat. 662, 664 (to be codified at 28 U.S.C. § 1257); see H.R.Rep. 660, 100th Cong., 2d sess. (1988), reprinted in 1988 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 766-83.

.See, e.g., New Orleans Pub. Serv., Inc. v. Council of the City of New Orleans, 850 F.2d 1069 (5th Cir.1988).