Revisiting Michigan V. Long after Twenty Years

In the 1983 decision of Michigan v. Long, (2) the United States Supreme Court held that when a state court bases its decision primarily on federal law, or state grounds that are interwoven with federal law, the Court will assume that it has jurisdiction to review that case. (3) State courts, however, could avoid Supreme Court review if that court provides a plain statement indicating that the decision rests on adequate and independent state grounds. (4) It has been almost twenty years since this landmark decision was handed down and the result has sparked much academic debate. This note attempts to add to this debate in several ways. Section I discusses the variety of standards that the United States Supreme Court has implemented to deal with problems arising under ambiguously grounded cases prior to Long. (5) Section II analyzes Long to discern the purpose of the case and the reasons for the Court's decision. (6) Next, Section III examines what goals were to be accomplished by the Court in adopting this new approach. (7) Section III explains the concerns that opponents, such as Justice Stevens, had regarding the effect of this new presumption. Section IV examines the nature of the twenty-five subsequent cases that the Supreme Court has taken based on jurisdiction established in Michigan v. Long. (8) Once the Supreme Court determined that it had jurisdiction to hear these cases, the Court went on to reverse and remand these cases for proceedings consistent with its earlier opinion. As a result, Section IV also takes an extensive look at the reaction of the lower courts once the case was remanded--whether the state court accepted the Court's reasoning or whether it declined to follow it and, instead, analyzed the case under the state constitution. (9) Section V examines whether the state courts made an effort to comply with Long by providing the Court with a plain statement that their judgments rested on independent and adequate state grounds. In contrast, a survey of the cases reveals that a number of cases failed to satisfy--consciously or through neglect, the Supreme Court's standard. (10) Finally, Section VI discusses whether Long has successfully accomplished its purpose(s) or whether the Supreme Court overreached its jurisdiction. More specifically, this section examines whether the opponents of Long were accurate in warning that expanding the Court's jurisdiction would result in a swollen docket, tension and conflict between courts, and a flood of advisory opinions. (11) After extracting the results from the note, a determination can be made that Long has not produced a bright-line conclusion. First, although it has been almost twenty years since the decision was handed down, some state courts have yet to realize the implications of the Long decision. As a consequence, some state courts have not adhered to the plain statement rule, even when seeking to rest their decision on their own state constitution. Second, although Long has provided the Court with a solid rule to follow instead of the ad hoc approaches used in the past, compliance with the rule has not achieved the goals that it was set out to accomplish. Thus, this note proposes a new and better approach for both the Supreme Court and state courts to follow. (12) The new approach for the Supreme Court, although not requiring literal compliance with Long, would not assume that it does not have jurisdiction in the absence of a statement to the contrary. This novel approach would give greater deference to the state courts if they make a bona-fide attempt to rest their decision on state grounds. This deference will permit the Court's goals in Long to be fully achieved, instead of having them only partially attained. Finally, the new approach for state courts would alert and require the courts to be conscious of the obligation that they have to clearly base their decisions on either state or federal grounds. I. …