Syllabus | Opinion [ Ginsburg ] | Concurrence [ Scalia ] | Concurrence [ Kennedy ] |
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Scalia, J., concurring
KENNETH LEE BAKER and STEVEN ROBERT BAKER, by his next friend, MELISSA THOMAS, PETI-TIONERS v. GENERAL MOTORS
CORPORATION
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT
[January 13, 1998]
Justice Scalia, concurring in the judgment.
I agree with the Court that enforcement measures do not travel with sister-state judgments as preclusive effects do. Ante, at 11. It has long been established that the judgment of a state Court cannot be enforced out of the state by an execution issued within it. McElmoyle ex rel. Bailey v. Cohen, 13 Pet. 312, 325 (1839). To recite that principle is to decide this case.
General Motors asked a District Court in Missouri to enforce a Michigan injunction. The Missouri court was no more obliged to enforce the Michigan injunction by preventing Elwell from presenting his testimony than it was obliged to enforce it by holding Elwell in contempt. The Full Faith and Credit Clause
establish a rule of evidence, rather than of jurisdiction. While they make the record of a judgment, rendered after due notice in one State, conclusive evidence in the courts of another State, or of the United States, of the matter adjudged, they do not affect the jurisdiction, either of the court in which the judgment is rendered, or of the court in which it is offered in evidence. Judgments recovered in one State of the Union, when proved in the courts of another government, whether state or national, within the United States, differ from judgments recovered in a foreign country in no other respect than in not being reexaminable on their merits, nor impeachable for fraud in obtaining them, if rendered by a court having jurisdiction of the cause and of the parties.
The judgment that General Motors obtained in Michigan
Because neither the Full Faith and Credit Clause nor its implementing statute requires Missouri to execute the injunction issued by the courts of Michigan, I concur in the judgment.