B1gGr33n
Member
So I got an email from the NRA that H.R.822 is back in deliberation and all that other congressional nonsense that I doubt even God understands at this point. I decided to do a google search on the bill and see if I could find some sort of timeline for it, when I stumbled into a comment on the bill that got me thinking.
The person commented that H.R.822 shouldn't be needed for national reciprocity because it should already be covered in Article IV, Section 1 of the US Constitution. For those that don't know, it's been dubbed the "Full Faith and Credit Clause", and it basically sais that any law or judgement given in another state is to be upheld in all the other states. It has since been interpreted several times in the Supreme Court, the most recent of which I know about was in 2003: Franchise Tax Board v. Hyatt. The court reiterated the ruling from 1939: Pacific Employers Insurance v. Industrial Accident, that "our precedent differentiates the credit owed to laws (legislative measures and common law) and to judgments." The 1939: Pacific Employers Insurance v. Industrial Accident case ruled that "There are some limitations upon 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 contravention of its own statutes or policy."
So if I'm understanding all these rulings correctly, that the Supreme Court has given precedence of Article IV, Section 1 to governing judgements, and that it cannot trump existing laws in other states which would cover the same ground. Is that a correct assumption?
It's too bad that most of these rulings came about before there was even a need for reciprocity. Had some of these rulings gone differently, or had it been challenged differently, we might have already had a long standing national reciprocity in force.
Can anyone with more experience shed some enlightenment on this subject for me?
The person commented that H.R.822 shouldn't be needed for national reciprocity because it should already be covered in Article IV, Section 1 of the US Constitution. For those that don't know, it's been dubbed the "Full Faith and Credit Clause", and it basically sais that any law or judgement given in another state is to be upheld in all the other states. It has since been interpreted several times in the Supreme Court, the most recent of which I know about was in 2003: Franchise Tax Board v. Hyatt. The court reiterated the ruling from 1939: Pacific Employers Insurance v. Industrial Accident, that "our precedent differentiates the credit owed to laws (legislative measures and common law) and to judgments." The 1939: Pacific Employers Insurance v. Industrial Accident case ruled that "There are some limitations upon 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 contravention of its own statutes or policy."
So if I'm understanding all these rulings correctly, that the Supreme Court has given precedence of Article IV, Section 1 to governing judgements, and that it cannot trump existing laws in other states which would cover the same ground. Is that a correct assumption?
It's too bad that most of these rulings came about before there was even a need for reciprocity. Had some of these rulings gone differently, or had it been challenged differently, we might have already had a long standing national reciprocity in force.
Can anyone with more experience shed some enlightenment on this subject for me?
