Last year’s cert denials in various same-sex marriage cases led to renewed discussion concerning the counterintuitive (to Christian, at least) notion but conventional wisdom that state courts are not bound to follow lower federal courts’ interpretations of federal law. While we discussed and debated this last fall, Amanda Frost was putting the finishing touches on an article reviewing, challenging, and otherwise completely examining this curious doctrine. Was Michael Dorf’s Hammer Blow, as we named the episode with him, the final blow or might some of Christian’s naive doubts be rehabilitated by Prof. Frost’s exhaustive analysis? Yep, that kind of cliffhanger is how we roll around here. Also, North Dakota and the permissibility of “funny business” in our email address.

This show’s links:


Amanda Frost’s faculty profile and writing
A helpful list of North Dakota landmarks
2 Hidden Ways to Get More from Your Gmail Address
The Georgia Law Summer Program in China, where you can be misinformed by Christian in person and in China
Amanda Frost, Inferiority Complex: Should State Courts Follow Lower Federal Court Precedent on the Meaning of Federal Law?
Our trilogy of prior episodes on this issue: with Anthony Kreis, with Michael Dorf, and with Steve Vladeck
The series of blog posts coinciding with those episodes: from Michael Dorf here and here, Steve Vladeck, and Christian Turner
Michael Dorf, Even More Thoughts on State Court (Non)Obligation to Follow Federal Appeals Court Precedents (Wherein I Respond to Professor Frost)
Amanda Frost, The “Inferior” Federal Courts
Chief Justice Roy Moore’s Administrative Order
Eric Eckholm, Supreme Court Undercuts Alabama Chief Justice’s Argument to Delay Same-Sex Marriages
Lockhart v. Fretwell, in which Justice Thomas concurred and briefly argued that the “Supremacy Clause demands that state law yield to federal law, but neither federal supremacy nor any other principle of federal law requires that a state court's interpretation of federal law give way to a (lower) federal court's interpretation”
Cooper v. Aaron
Martin v. Hunter’ Lessee
Amanda Frost, Overvaluing Uniformity
Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins; see also our episode all about Erie
About the adequate and independent state grounds doctrine
James Pfander, One Supreme Court: Supremacy, Inferiority, and the Judicial Power of the United States (see also this very brief book review)
Dice v. Akron, Canton and Youngstown Railroad Co.
Bush v. Gore (Rehnquist’s concurring opinion arguing that state courts may not interfere, even through state constitutional judgments, with certain legislatively enacted election laws that interact in advantageous ways with federal law)
About Chevron deference
Abbe Gluck, The States as Laboratories of Statutory Interpretation
United States Telecom Association v. FCC
Peter Strauss, One Hundred Fifty Cases Per Year: Some Implications of the Supreme Court's Limited Resources for Judicial Review of Agency Action
Special Guest: Amanda Frost.