Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl, Improving (and Avoiding) Interstate Interpretive Encounters, 2022 Wis. L. Rev. 1139 (2022).
Abstract
I largely agree that states must honor other states’ interpretive methods, but this Essay seeks to advance our understanding in three ways. First, the Essay grapples with nuances involving whether enacting states mean for their methods—and which aspects of them—to apply in other courts. Second, it addresses situations in which a forum state may have legitimate reasons to resist applying sister-state methodology to a sister-state statute. In such circumstances of true conflict, the best way to honor the sister state may be to avoid adjudicating claims under its law altogether rather than to apply its substantive law in a compromised form. Third, the Essay considers the potential role of the federal courts in modeling and encouraging compliance with the general duty to apply sister-state methodology.
