Federal Law News

Federal Courts May Decide Cases That Involve The United States Government

Before a federal court can hear a case, or “exercise its jurisdiction,” certain conditions must be met. First, under the Constitution, federal courts exercise only “judicial” powers. This means that federal judges may interpret the law only through the resolution of actual legal disputes, referred to in Article III of the Constitution as “Cases or Controversies.” A court cannot attempt to correct a problem on its own initiative, or to answer a hypothetical legal question.

Second, assuming there is an actual case or controversy, the plaintiff in a federal lawsuit also must have legal “standing” to ask the court for a decision. That means the plaintiff must have been aggrieved, or legally harmed in some way, by the defendant. Third, the case must present a category of dispute that the law in question was designed to address, and it must be a complaint that the court has the power to remedy.

In other words, the court must be authorized, under the Constitution or a federal law, to hear the case and grant appropriate relief to the plaintiff. Finally, the case cannot be “moot,” that is, it must present an ongoing problem for the court to resolve. The federal courts, thus, are courts of “limited” jurisdiction because they may only decide certain types of cases as provided by Congress or as identified in the Constitution.

Although the details of the complex web of federal jurisdiction that Congress has given the federal courts is beyond the scope of this brief guide, it is important to understand that there are two main sources of the cases coming before the federal courts: “federal question” jurisdiction, and “diversity” jurisdiction.

In general, federal courts may decide cases that involve the United States government, the United States Constitution or federal laws, or controversies between states or between the United States and foreign governments. A case that raises such a “federal question” may be filed in federal court.

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