Talk:Abstention doctrine

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The elements of a discussion on this topic should be primarily regarding whether or not there is a such thing as a state having jurisdiction over Constitutional issues. One issue for example is the simple fact that that if a State passes a law that is not Constitutional, then how can a state be unbiased in judging it's own laws.

• I'm not sure where you're coming from there - abstention doctrines are more about the use of power of federal courts than in state courts. It is well settled law that states can have jurisdiction over constitutional issues to the extent that Congress does not withhold such jurisdiction exclusively to the federal courts.  BD2412 ^talk 15:27, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I edited Pullman abstention to focus on the fact that the federal court is abstaining not so that the state court can rule a law unconstitutional under the federal constitution, but so that the state court might construct ambiguous law in a way that doesn't require a federal constitutional ruling. --Rmalloy 14:28, 26 February 2007 (UTC) This article is pretty good! Nice job everyone. --140.247.248.113 02:48, 21 June 2007 (UTC)