Frank M. Johnson, Jr., is Chief Judge, U.S. Middle District Court, Montgom ery, Alabama. This article is based on a speech delivered, on March 27,1975, at the Annual Recognition Banquet of the National Association of Social Workers, West Alabama Region, Ala bama State University, Montgomery. In recent years the federal courts enacting laws, that of executing the have been increasingly concerned with public resolutions, and that of trying political decisions, made by state and die causes of individuals.1 national governmental bodies, that deTo the extent that the courts are re termine which social services will be quested to look to the future and to provided for citizens and how they change existing conditions by making will be distributed. Perhaps this denew rules, rather than merely to en velopment is not surprising. As de force liabilities as they stand on pres Tocqueville observed when he visited ent or past facts and under existing the United States in 1831, all Amerilaws, the courts become vulnerable to can problems eventually end up in a the charge of usurping the authority court of law. But even de Tocqueville of the legislative or the executive and certainly the Founding Fathers branch. would be astonished to survey the Second, this country's Constitution growing list of fundamental social and laws are quite clear in limiting the problems that are now presented to power of the federal courts to partici the federal courts for adjudication, pate in the essentially political affairs The federal courts in Alabama have of our society. The Tenth Amendment been called upon to decide—and have unmistakably commands that any reluctantly decided—such basic quespower not delegated to the United tions as how to make available equal States or to a particular branch of quality public education to all the chilthe federal government is reserved to dren of the state; what steps must be the individual states or to the people, taken to ensure that all Alabama's With reference to the provision of citizens are permitted to serve on jursocial services, the Tenth Amendment ies, to vote, and to have their votes is especially important, counted equally; under what condi Ever since the founding of this re tions criminal offenders may be inpublic, certain governmental functions carcerated; and what minimal stanhave been deemed primarily, if not dards of care and treatment must be exclusively, state functions. Among provided for the mentally ill and menthese are public education, mainte tally retarded committed to the cusnance of state and local penal insti tody of the state. tutions, domestic relations, and pro The federal courts have been revision for the poor, homeless, aged, luctant to provide solutions to these and infirm. Other specific statutory most compelling problems for at least limitations on the jurisdiction of the three important reasons. First, Amerifederal courts emphasize the delicate can democracy owes much of its philointerweaving of state and national in sophical foundation to the ideas and terest and authority by designating the theories of the eighteenth-century federal courts as courts of limited jur French philosophers, especially to isdiction—that is, to get into a federal their insistence on a government whose court at all, a plaintiff must fit within powers are separate and distinct. one or more of the several narrowly Montesquieu explained the principle defined categories of persons whose as follows: claims may be recognized in a federal rather than a state court.
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Nov 1, 1995
Philip W Suckling 
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