{"id":9057,"date":"2010-02-23T23:28:48","date_gmt":"2010-02-24T04:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=9057"},"modified":"2010-02-24T21:48:46","modified_gmt":"2010-02-25T02:48:46","slug":"a-broadening-of-diversity-jurisdiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2010\/02\/a-broadening-of-diversity-jurisdiction\/","title":{"rendered":"A Broadening of Diversity Jurisdiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Students of civil procedure\u2014which should mean just about everybody interested in using the formal processes of the law to vindicate rights\u2014will be interested in a decision today by the United States Supreme Court. The opinion concerned the provision in the statutory grant of diversity jurisdiction that deems a corporation \u201cto be a citizen of any State by which it has been incorporated and of the State where it has its principal place of business.\u201d<\/em> 28 U. S. C. \u00a71332(c)(1) (emphasis added). There has been a longstanding imprecision\u2014a lack of unanimity\u2014within the lower federal courts as to whether a corporation\u2019s \u201cprincipal place of business\u201d is its \u201cnerve center,\u201d \u201clocus of operations,\u201d \u201ccenter of corporate activities,\u201d \u201cmuscle center\u201d (none of these latter four terms being statutory), or some otherwise determined place. In Hertz Corp. v. Friend<\/em>, the Court resolved the matter. <\/p>\n

In a unanimous opinion by Justice Breyer<\/a>, the Court held that \u201cthe phrase \u2018principal place of business\u2019 refers to the place where the corporation\u2019s high level officers direct, control, and coordinate the corporation\u2019s activities.\u201d That is, the Court authoritatively and explicitly identified a corporation\u2019s \u201cnerve center\u201d as its principal place of business and further elaborated that \u201cthe \u2018nerve center\u2019 will typically be found at a corporation\u2019s headquarters.\u201d As one would expect of a unanimous Supreme Court opinion, the interpretation has much to recommend it, in terms of both textual analysis and administrability: in the latter regard, the Court cited with approval Justice Scalia\u2019s observation in an earlier case that vague boundaries are \u201cto be avoided in the area of subject-matter jurisdiction wherever possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

The decision will nonetheless not be warmly greeted across the country. I refer not so much to law professors, although it is true that they will have one less ambiguity with which to becloud\u2014I mean, introduce<\/em>\u2014the study of law. Rather, many judges of the lower federal courts\u2014which unlike the Supreme Court do not have discretion over their dockets\u2014have long been the most vocal opponents of diversity jurisdiction. After all, one does not become a federal district judge out of an interest to decide state-law suits (such as wage-and-hour claims here) that happen to be in the federal system only because of the fortuity of diversity of citizenship (and the satisfaction of the amount in controversy), does he (or, in places outside of the Eastern District of Wisconsin, she)? Indeed, one can see this reality even in the Ninth Circuit, where Hertz<\/em> arose: not exactly known for eschewing federal jurisdiction, the court\u2019s failure previously to apply the \u201cnerve center\u201d test had meant that it could deem to be citizens of California many corporations\u2014such as Hertz\u2014with executive offices located elsewhere but with more employees in California than anywhere else (simply because of California\u2019s size). More California \u201ccitizen[s],\u201d less diversity jurisdiction, fewer state-law wage-and-hour claims for the federal courts in the Ninth Circuit to decide\u2014but no longer will this be so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students of civil procedure\u2014which should mean just about everybody interested in using the formal processes of the law to vindicate rights\u2014will be interested in a decision today by the United States Supreme Court. The opinion concerned the provision in the statutory grant of diversity jurisdiction that deems a corporation \u201cto be a citizen of any […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,21,54,34,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-procedure","category-eastern-district-of-wisconsin","category-federal-civil-litigation","category-legal-education","category-us-supreme-court","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}