28 U.S.C. § 1738
State and Territorial statutes and judicial proceedings; full faith and credit
The Acts of the legislature of any State, Territory, or Possession of the United States, or copies thereof, shall be authenticated by affixing the seal of such State, Territory or Possession thereto.
The records and judicial proceedings of any court of any such State, Territory or Possession, or copies thereof, shall be proved or admitted in other courts within the United States and its Territories and Possessions by the attestation of the clerk and seal of the court annexed, if a seal exists, together with a certificate of a judge of the court that the said attestation is in proper form.
Such Acts, records and judicial proceedings or copies thereof, so authenticated, shall have the same full faith and credit in every court within the United States and its Territories and Possessions as they have by law or usage in the courts of such State, Territory or Possession from which they are taken.
Notes of Decisions
Cited in 5,174
cases (789 in the last 5 years), 1949–2026 · leading case: State v. Howard
State v. Howard (2011)
“§ 9-312 and 28 U.S.C. § 1738 and, therefore, found Howard not guilty of the enhancement.”
San Remo Hotel, L. P. v. City & County of San Francisco (2005)
“This case presents the question whether federal courts may craft an exception to the full faith and credit statute, 28 U. S. C. § 1738 , for claims brought under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.”
Kremer v. Chemical Construction Corp. (1982)
“122 , 28 U. S. C. § 1738 . More recently, Congress implemented the national policy against employment discrimination by creating an array of substantive protections and remedies which generally allows federal courts to determine the merits of a discrimination claim.”
University of Tennessee v. Elliott (1986)
“It held that 28 U. S. C. § 1738 , [4] which concerns the preclusive effect of "judicial *794 proceedings of any [state] court," does not require that federal courts be bound by the unreviewed findings of state administrative agencies.”
Allen v. McCurry (1980)
“" 28 U. S. C. § 1738 . [8] Huron Holding Corp.”
Knick v. Township of Scott (2019)
“TOWNSHIP OF SCOTT Opinion of the Court statute, 28 U. S. C. §1738 , required the federal court to give preclusive effect to the state court’s decision, blocking any subsequent consideration of whether the plaintiff had suffered a taking within the meaning of the Fifth Amend-…”
Lance v. Dennis (2006)
“In Exxon Mobil, decided last Term, we warned that the lower courts have at times extended Rooker-Feldman "far beyond the contours of the Rooker and Feldman cases, overriding Congress' conferral of federal-court jurisdiction concurrent with jurisdiction exercised by state courts,…”
Eric Noel v. Brian C. Hall Sandra A. Hall, Fka Sandra Johnson, and Gabrielle S. Lennartz Herb Weisser Michelle A. Mercha (2003)
“They are, first, the rule that overlapping or even identical federal and state court litigation may proceed simultaneously, limited only by doctrines of abstention and comity; and, second, the rule of 28 U.S.C. § 1738 , under which a federal court must give the same preclusive…”
Lops v. Lops (1998)
“g arguendo that Respondents are correct that a state court final judgment regarding personal jurisdiction may bar a federal court's reconsidering that issue in certain circumstances, the doctrine of collateral estoppel is inapplicable here because the Georgia court's…”
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. v. Epstein (1996)
“Absent a partial repeal of the Full Faith and Credit Act, 28 U. S. C. § 1738 , by another federal statute, a federal court must give the judgment the same effect that it would have in the courts of the State in which it was rendered.”
Migra v. Warren City School District Board of Education (1984)
“II The Constitution's Full Faith and Credit Clause [4] is implemented by the federal full faith and credit statute, 28 U. S. C. § 1738 . That statute reads in pertinent part: "Such Acts, records and judicial proceedings or copies thereof, so authenticated, shall have the same…”
Nourbakhsh v. Gayden (In Re Nourbakhsh) (1994)
“See, 28 U.S.C. § 1738 . The full faith and credit statute provides that state judicial proceedings "shall have the same full faith and credit in every court within the United States .”
Annotations are extracted automatically from the opinions in the
Syfert caselaw corpus and ranked by authority, recency, and
treatment. Dots show Syfertize treatment of the citing case itself.