By: Rory Ryan
For nearly 20 years, the Supreme Court’s federal-question
jurisprudence was muddied after the Court’s decision in
Merrell-Dow. Last term, the Court issued a much-needed
clarification in Grable & Sons Metal Products, Inc. v.
Darue Engineering & Manufacturing. But the
implications of Grable need further clarification.
While the area of federal-question jurisprudence is rich with
debate about what the law should be, a candid post-Grable synthesis
is needed both to guide courts and to provide a common ground for
these debates. This Article endeavors to provide a candid
synthesis of what the law is after Grable.
Federal-question jurisdiction is not a concept that can be
viewed without its historical and theoretical underpinnings.
And a bald reading of Grable does not reveal the nuances
that exist, as many years of precedent have been synthesized into a
new test. This Article first outlines the basic structure of
the subject-matter-jurisdiction inquiry, explaining the structure
of Article III of the Constitution, the significance of its use of
the words “arising under,” and the interrelationship between those
words in the Constitution and the same words in § 1331. The
Article then traces the pre-Grable interpretation of the
federal-question statute to provide the necessary context for
understanding Grable at a more than superficial
level. Next, the Article details the Grable decision
and how it both arrived at and applied its new four-prong
test. Finally, the article analyzes the four-prong test and
provides a framework for applying it to future cases.