Summary and Analysis
Section XII: Judiciary:
Federalist No. 82 (Hamilton)
Summary
This is a legalistic essay, to be easily understood only by a lawyer, on the complex "doctrine of concurrent jurisdiction" between the national and the state courts. The doctrine involved the question of which courts had primary jurisdiction, and how appeals would be made from court to court.
Having cited a number of hypothetical examples, Hamilton concluded that as state governments and the national government were kindred systems and "parts Of ONE WHOLE," the inference was conclusive that state courts would have concurrent jurisdiction in all cases arising under federal law, except where "expressly prohibited."
Analysis
In this essay Hamilton did reasonably well in clarifying for the lay mind the perplexities about how the highly legalistic "doctrine of concurrent jurisdiction" between national and state courts would work in practice.