# Brown v. Gerdes

> Supreme Court of the United States · February 7, 1944 · 321 U.S. 178

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9419446

## Case

- **Full name:** BROWN Et Al. v. GERDES Et Al., TRUSTEES
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** February 7, 1944
- **Citations:** 321 U.S. 178; 64 S. Ct. 487; 88 L. Ed. 659; 1944 U.S. LEXIS 1325
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Frankfurter
- **Judges:** Douglas, Frankfurter, Roberts, Jackson
- **Cited by:** 100 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9419446

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- holding that bankruptcy courts have exclusive jurisdiction to fix reasonable compensation to be paid to attorneys representing a debtor in possession, partly because of disclosure obligations to the court and partly because of the potential damage to the estate if compensation…
- finding that counsel for the debtor is an officer of the court and is bound by fiduciary standards

## Opinion text

Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
concurring:
1. Since 1789, rights derived from federal law could be enforced in state courts unless Congress confined their enforcement to the federal courts. This has been so precisely for the same reason that rights created by the British Parliament or by the Legislature of Vermont could be enforced in the New York courts. Neither Congress nor the British Parliament nor the Vermont Legislature has power to confer jurisdiction upon the New York courts. But the jurisdiction conferred upon them by the only authority that has power to create them and to confer jurisdiction upon them—namely the law-making power of the State of New York—enables them to enforce rights no matter what the legislative source of the right may be. See, for instance, United States v. Jones, 109 U. S. 513, 520 .
2. In short, subject to only one limitation, each State of the Union may establish its own judicature, distribute judicial power among the courts of its choice, define the conditions for the exercise of their jurisdiction and the modes of their proceeding, to the same extent as Congress is empowered to establish a system of inferior federal courts within the limits of federal judicial power, and the States are as free from control by Congress in establishing *189 state systems for litigation as is Congress free from state control in establishing a federal system for litigation. The only limitation upon the freedom of a State to define the jurisdiction of its own courts is that implied by Article IY, § 2 of the Constitution, whereby “The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.” The Constitution does not require New York to give jurisdiction to its courts against its will. But “If the State does provide a court to which its own citizens may resort in a certain class of cases, it may be that citizens of other States of the Union also would have a right to resort to it in cases of the same class.” Anglo-American Provision Co. v. Davis Provision Co., No. 1, 191 U. S. 373, 374 . The matter was well put by Judge Cuthbert Pound in connection with litigation under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act in the state courts: “the State courts must make no hostile discrimination against litigants who come within the act in question; . . . they must treat litigants under the Federal act as other litigants are treated; . . . they are to act in conformity with their general principles of practice and procedure and are not to deny jurisdiction merely because the right of action arises under the act of Congress.” Murnan v. Wabash Ry. Co., 246 N. Y. 244, 247 , 158 N. E. 508, 509 .
3. The upshot of the matter is that “rights, whether legal or equitable, acquired under the laws of the United States, may be prosecuted in the United States courts, or in the State courts, competent to decide rights of the like character and class; subject, however, to this qualification,. that where a right arises under a law of the United States, Congress may, if it see fit, give to the Federal courts exclusive jurisdiction.” Claflin v. Houseman, 93 U. S. 130, 136-137 . Whether a state court is “competent to decide rights of the like character and class,” whether the particular litigation is to be tried by jury and, if so, how the jury *190 is to be composed, whether it is to be a jury of twelve or less, whether decision is to be by unanimity or majority, whether security is to be furnished and of what nature— in sum, whether a state court can take jurisdiction and what the incidents of the litigation should be—all these are matters wholly within the control of the State creating the court and without the power of Congress. See, for instance, Minneapolis & St. Louis R. Co. v. Bombolis, 241 U. S. 211 . As it was put by Mr. Justice Story in Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, 1 Wheat. 304, 330-331 , “Congress cannot vest any portion of the judicial power of the United States, except in courts ordained and established by itself.” Congress may avail itself of state courts for the enforcement of federal rights, but it must take the state courts as it finds them, subject to all the conditions for litigation in the state courts that the State has decreed for every other litigant who seeks access to its courts.
4. Congress from the beginning has allowed federally created rights to be enforced in state courts not only by the general implications of our legal system but also by explicit authorization. The nature of the obligation of the state court under such legislation has been most litigated in connection with the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, and after thorough canvass the matter was thus summarized by Mr. Justice Holmes in Douglas v. New York, N. H. & H. R. Co., 279 U. S. 377, 387-388 , “As to the grant of jurisdiction in the Employers’ Liability Act, that statute does not purport to require State Courts to entertain suits arising under it, but only to empower them to do so, so far as the authority of the United States is concerned. It may very well be that if the Supreme Court of New York were given no discretion, being otherwise competent, it would be subject to a duty. But there is nothing in the Act of Congress that purports to force a duty upon such Courts as against an otherwise valid excuse.”
*191 5. The simple fact is that from 1789 to this day no act of Congress has attempted to force upon state courts the duty of enforcing any right created by federal law on terms other than those on which like litigation involving rights other than federal rights is required to be conducted in a state court. It certainly has not done so by the Bankruptcy Act nor can any implication to that effect be derived from the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. For the Supremacy Clause does not give greater supremacy to the Bankruptcy Act over the free scope of the States to determine what shall be litigated in their courts and under what conditions, than it gives with reference to rights directly secured by the Constitution, such as those guaranteed by the Full Faith and Credit Clause, see Anglo-American Provision Co. v. Davis Provision Co., No. 1, supra, or with reference to the power exercised by Congress under the Commerce Clause, see Minneapolis & St. Louis R. Co. v. Bombolis, supra.
6. The exercise of a right which Congress has not sought to exercise since 1789 and evidently has not exercised because of the constitutional relation of federal rights to their enforcement in state courts should not be read into Chapter X. c. 575, 52 Stat. 883 , 11 U. S. C. § 501 et seq. We should hesitate long before we find that Congress has assumed the power to render unconstitutional state legislation by which access to a state court would be allowed to a litigant on no different terms than those which the State has prescribed for its own litigants to whom access to its courts is given in like cases. And certainly such a wholly novel doctrine of constitutional law should not be resorted to gratuitously when the case before us can be disposed of on the conclusive ground that the litigation conducted in the New York courts was conducted under an arrangement consonant with New York law, namely that the attorneys’ fees were to be fixed not by the New York courts *192 but by the Bankrutcy Court. See Matter of Heinsheimer, 214 N. Y. 361 , 108 N. E. 636 . Recognition that such is New York law and that therefore the remission of fee-fixing in this case to the Bankruptcy Court is not in conflict with that law appears from the opinion below: “as a matter of fact the retainer of these attorneys was subject to the condition that the amount of any fees would be fixed by the United States District Court.” 290 N. Y. 468, 475 . The disposition of this case requires neither the assumption made in the Court’s opinion relating to New York law, nor the application given to Chapter X, both of which must be inescapable before we even reach the constitutional issue needlessly projected.
7. Hines v. Lowrey, 305 U. S. 85 , does not touch this problem. That case involved § 500 of the World War Veterans’ Act which limited to $10 the fee that may be allowed for services in pressing a claim before the United States Veterans’ Bureau and made it a crime to charge more. A New York court granted a fee of $1,500 for such services because the estate of the veteran was being administered by a committee appointed by the state court which had appointed an attorney to press the claim before the Veterans’ Bureau. Of course this Court held that a state court cannot sanction that which Congress has outlawed as a crime. The New York court in effect denied the authority of federal law to fix fees for litigation before a federal tribunal—a very different thing from denying to the State of New York the authority to fix fees for litigation in its own courts. The limitations in the Hines case fixed by Congress did not run counter to any requirement of New York law governing the conduct of suits in its courts. That case was not concerned with such a situation, and therefore could not possibly hold that, if New York had a policy for litigation in its courts contrary to that expressed by Congressional enactment, a federal right could be pursued in disregard of the conditions for entry *193 into New York courts applicable to all other litigants. Congress has never said that it can subvert the declared policy of a State as to the manner in which, or the conditions under which, litigation in state courts should be conducted. The federal law in any field within which Congress is empowered to legislate is the supreme law of the land in the sense that it may supplant state legislation in that field, but not in the sense that it may supplant the existing rules of litigation in state courts. Congress has full power to provide its own courts for litigating federal rights. The state courts belong to the States. They are not subject to the control of Congress though of course state law may in words or by implication make the federal rule for conducting litigation the rule that should govern suits to enforce federal rights in the state courts. Surely it cannot be that should New York decide to regulate the public profession of the law by putting the determination of all attorneys’ fees in charge of its courts, Congress could provide that actions thereafter brought in New York courts in the enforcement of federal rights shall not be subject to New York’s fee system. I repeat, Hines v. Lowrey, supra, gives no support whatever to a claim which was not involved in that case, which it did not consider, and which runs counter to the whole course of federal judiciary legislation and federal adjudication.
We ought not to go out of our way to embarrass consideration of such delicate questions in the working of our federal system whenever in the future they may call for decision by this Court.
Mr. Justice Jackson joins in this opinion.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9419446. Public record. Not legal advice.