concluding that “[t]he context of the PKPA ... suggests that the principal problem Congress was seeking to remedy was the inapplicability of full faith and credit requirements to custody determinations” and that “Congress’ chief aim in enacting the PKPA was to extend the requirements of the Full Faith and Credit Clause to custody determinations”
How later courts described this case
- concluding that “[t]he context of the PKPA ... suggests that the principal problem Congress was seeking to remedy was the inapplicability of full faith and credit requirements to custody determinations” and that “Congress’ chief aim in enacting the PKPA was to extend the requirements of the Full Faith and Credit Clause to custody determinations”
- stating that committee reports are “frail substitutes for bicameral vote upon the text of a law and its presentment to the President, [and that i]t is at best dangerous to assume that all the necessary participants in the law enactment process are acting upon the same unexpressed assumptions”
- stating that once a state exercises jurisdiction consistently with the PKPA, no other state may exercise concurrent jurisdiction over a custody dispute governed by the PKPA, and “all States must accord full faith and credit to the first State's ... custody decree”
- holding that the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act did not create a private cause of 28 action enforceable in federal court because doing so would “entangle[] [federal courts] in traditional state‐law questions that they have little expertise to resolve”
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Disagreed with by Atkins v. Atkins, 623 So. 2d 239 (1993)
In light of Thompson, supra, and the language of 28 U.S.C.A. § 1738A(c)(2), we disagree with the Arkansas Supreme Court in its statement that the PKPA grants exclusive jurisdiction to the home state.
The opinion
*188 Justice O’Connor,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
For the reasons expressed by Justice Scalia in Part I of his opinion in this case, I join all but the first full paragraph of Part II of the Court’s opinion and judgment.