Case Citator › Swift v. Tyson

Swift v. Tyson

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Overruled
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
41 U.S. (16 Pet.) 1
Decided
Confirmed treatments
2
Flagged citations read
130 of 130
Citing cases (total)
831
Treatment dates
1938–1942
Overruled
A reviewed court has overruled this case. Swift v. Tyson is overruled among the reviewed cases: all 130 flagged citations have been read, with the 2 confirmed treatments listed below. Erie Railroad v. Tompkins disapproved Swift's general-federal-common-law doctrine and held that federal courts exercising diversity jurisdiction must apply state decisional as well as statutory law.
More on how this was screened

Avey v. Leather Products Co. independently criticized Swift's doctrine as an invasion of powers reserved to the States. The other reviewed opinions followed Swift before Erie, merely reported Erie's act afterward, applied surviving propositions on other grounds, quoted party arguments or dissents, were vacated, or contained unrelated nearby treatment language. Duplicate flagged citations were processed separately.

Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case.

831 later cases cite Swift v. Tyson; 130 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

Relying on Swift v. Tyson?

This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.

Treatments

Overruled

  • The Supreme Court disapproved Swift's doctrine that federal courts exercising diversity jurisdiction could determine general common law independently of state courts, holding instead that there is no federal general common law.

    Erie Railroad v. Tompkins · Supreme Court of the United States · filed

    Thus the doctrine of Swift v. Tyson is, as Mr. Justice Holmes said, “an unconstitutional assumption of powers by courts of the United States which no lapse of time or respectable array of opinion should make us hesitate to correct.” In disapproving that doctrine we do not hold *80unconstitutional § 34 of the Federal Judiciary Act of 1789 or any other Act of Congress. We merely declare that in applying the doctrine this Court and the lower courts have invaded rights whicíi in our opinion are reserved by the Constitution to the several States.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

Criticized

  • The Ohio Court of Appeals criticized Swift's general-law doctrine as an invasion by the federal judiciary of powers reserved to the States.

    Avey v. Leather Products Co. · Ohio Court of Appeals · filed

    As Swift v. Tyson, supra, announced a doctrine that constituted an invasion of the reserved power of the states hy the federal judiciary, the doctrine advanced here, if adopted, would constitute an invasion by the state judiciary of the power delegated to the United States and would be a direct interference with the exercise of such power by the United States.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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