Spencer Cox: “Mr. Speaker, I thank the preceding speaker for pointing out how urgent it is for the Democrats in control of the other…”

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the preceding speaker for pointing out how urgent it is for the Democrats in control of the other body to approve the some 100 judges that President Bush has nominated that are being held hostage to politics. That is the reason that we have some backlog in some of our courts. The fairness bill which is on the floor today is addressed to something much more discrete, and that is what is the proper role of the Federal courts and what is the proper role of the State courts. This bill is needed to restore to the Federal courts the jurisdiction that the Framers of our Constitution gave to the Federal courts. It was the Framers that decided that when the parties to a case live in different States, multiple States, when what is at issue in the case are the laws of multiple States, that that kind of jurisdiction, diversity jurisdiction, so-called, is properly vested in the Federal courts. What we are hearing in opposition to putting nationwide class actions in Federal Court is a sort of reverse Federalism; that somehow if multiple States are involved and parties from multiple States are involved, that a hamlet in some county in America should make law for the whole country.”