Professor Bellia Examines Questions of Federal Judicial Power
In a forthcoming article, Professor A.J. Bellia examines important questions surrounding the powers of federal courts under the Constitution. The article—entitled The Process Acts and the Alien Tort Statute—confronts the question whether federal courts have power to adjudicate causes of action that neither Congress nor state law has created. Courts and scholars have long debated whether federal courts enjoy the power to hear such actions—commonly called “federal common law” causes of action—or whether they only have power to hear actions that Congress or a state has made through its regular lawmaking processes. In debating such questions, judges and scholars usually presume, as a historical matter, that early federal courts had power to find causes of action in general common law.
