Such acts, records, and legal proceedings, or copies thereof, certified in this manner, shall have the same confidence and recognition in any court of the United States and its territories and possessions as under the law or use in the courts of that state, territory, or from which they arise, have. [17] However, this conventional wisdom can be challenged because it does not take into account the important personal rights that flow from marriage – in particular, the rights to things such as property, children and inheritance, rights whose purpose is to justify both the couple`s and society`s interest in stability, equality and predictability in the conjugal relationship. See Steve Sanders, Is the Full Faith and Credit Clause Still `Irrelevant` to Same-Sex Marriage?: Towards a Reconsideration of the Conventional Wisdom, 89 Ind. L. J. 95 (2014). Moreover, conventional wisdom seems difficult to reconcile with the deep-rooted American legal tradition of treating marriage as a sui generis legal construct, a status probably for life from which there can be no exit through divorce without the permission of the state. The Supreme Court has long described marriage as the “foundation of the family and society.” Maynard v. Hill (1888). Until the Supreme Court repealed all laws prohibiting interracial marriage in 1967, a number of states banned interracial marriage and did not recognize marriage certificates issued in other states for interracial couples. The full faith and credit clause has never been used to force a state to recognize a marriage it did not want to recognize.
[18] However, the existence of a de facto marriage in a sister state (which is still available in nine states and the District of Columbia) has been recognized in divorce or dissolution cases. It is argued that this law only provides for the admission of such documents as evidence, but does not explain the effect of such evidence if it is admitted. This argument cannot be supported. The law states that the duly authenticated protocol has the faith and recognition it has before the state court from which it originates. If, in such a court, he has the conviction and recognition of evidence of the highest nature, that is, to record evidence, he must have the same faith and the same credit in all other courts. There are certain limits to the extent to which a State may be required by the full faith and credit clause to enforce even the judgment of another State in violation of its own laws or policies. See Wisconsin v. Pelican Insurance Co., 127 U.S.
265; Huntington v. Attrill, 146 U.S. 657; Finney v Guy, 189 U.S. 335; see also Clarke v. Clarke, 178 U.S. 186; Olmsted v. Olmsted, 216 U.S. 386; Hood by McGehee, 237 U.S. 611; see Gasquet v. Fenner, 247 U.S. 16. And in the case of laws.
The full faith and credit clause does not require a State to replace its own status, which applies to persons and events therein, with the contradictory status of another State, even if that right has dominant force in the courts of the State in which it was promulgated in respect of the same persons and events. [15] In 1790, shortly after the Constitution was ratified, Congress took action under the full faith and credit clause, enacting that “records and judicial proceedings certified as mentioned above shall have faith and recognition in all courts of the United States as they have done under law or use in state courts, [12] In 1813, the Supreme Court interpreted this federal statute in the main case of Mills v. Duryee, where the judgment of a New York court was used in a local court in the District of Columbia. [13] Justice Joseph Story wrote for the court that it was federal law (not the constitutional provision) that made records from one state to another effective: such problems are preferable for Congress to decide. Should 14-year-olds be able to escape to another state if they can`t get married at home? What law regulates internet contracts or serious accidents with victims in many states? There is something at stake for everyone on these issues; and if we want to change the answers, we should do so through elected representatives for whom everyone votes. That is what the full faith and credit clause said, and I hope that one day the courts will listen. But each state had different rules on how to prove them and what the documents should look like – for example, which ones required which seals or which had to be signed by which officers. And even if a document was authentic, the courts did not agree on the legal force it had outside the borders of its state of origin. Thus, in 1781, a committee recommended that Congress adopt these rules: to establish a uniform standard that the documents of each state could meet and declare their legal effect. .