Full Faith and Credit Clause, Carry Rights Implicated?

[Frank Ettin]

Isn't the granting of a carry license a public act?

Is it? Have you done any research to find out?

I suspect not. If you had you might have discovered that "public act" means:

(Law) an act or statute affecting matters of public concern. Of such statutes the courts take judicial notice.

or:

An act of legislation affecting the public as a whole

And since the Full Faith and Credit Clause has been around for over 200 years, you might expect there to be some history. Had you done some research, you might have found this article:

...In drafting the Full Faith and Credit Clause, the Framers of the Constitution were motivated by a desire to unify their new country while preserving the autonomy of the states. To that end, they sought to guarantee that judgments rendered by the courts of one state would not be ignored by the courts of other states. The Supreme Court reiterated the Framers' intent when it held that the Full Faith and Credit Clause precluded any further litigation of a question previously decided by an Illinois court in Milwaukee County v. M. E. White Co., 296 U.S. 268, 56 S. Ct. 229, 80 L. Ed. 220 (1935).....

Or you might have found this article:

...The Court first interpreted the clause in the 1813 case Mills v. Duryee [11 U.S. 481]. Currently, the Court has heard numerous cases involving the Full Faith and Credit Clause. The Court says that the clause can be used in three different ways. First, the clause can command a state to take jurisdiction, or control, over a claim that started in another state. Second, the clause can determine which state's law should be applied when a case involves more than one state. And lastly, the clause directs states to acknowledge and enforce court judgments from other states. ...

OK, so my new (and probably temporary) understanding is that there is, in fact, no substance behind FF&C. You get a nominal recognition, but that nominal recognition potentially has no substance whatsoever....

Which merely reflects your naivety. See above.

The Full Faith and Credit Clause can be very important -- even if perhaps not important to what concerns you here the most, the RKBA. But there are other legal matters which can be of huge significance to the parties involved, and with respect to which the Full Faith and Credit Clause can be extremely helpful.

• What if you and your spouse were required for business reasons to relocate from State B, the State in which you were married and in which you had lived for 10 years, to State A, but you discovered that once living under the laws of State A you were no longer considered to be married.
  
  
• A need to be able to enforce judgements or court orders in multiple States is very common. Without the Full Faith and Credit Clause, you couldn't count on doing so.
  
  
• Disputes about who owns what are not uncommon especially when conflicting laws of multiple States are involved. The Full Faith and Credit Clause helps sort out those kinds of disputes.
  
  
• And then there are matters involving multi-state child custody disputes.

"And in fact your State B license to marry does mean nothing in State A: It won't allow you to legally contract marriage in State A. "

Well, if it has the effect of preventing me from legally contracting marriage in State A, then clearly my State B license does mean something, right? If it truly meant nothing, how could it have consequences?

Good God!

A marriage license from State B doesn't prevent you from getting married in State A. It's simply not valid to allow you to get married in State A. If you want to get married in State A, you need a marriage license from State A.

 

[maestro pistolero]

Thanks for repeatedly pointing out my naivety and lack of research. I asked questions. I didn't make any statements I couldn't substantiate. If such questions are inappropriate for this forum, just say so.

Your lacking bedside manner aside I thank you for the answers. Hopefully others will benefit from the information without enduring the chastising.

 

[Frank Ettin]

...Your lacking bedside manner aside....

We've been dealing with each other long enough for you not to expect much in the way of "bedside manner" from me.

 

[speedrrracer]

Thanks for those links, Frank. So my new, new logic goes like this:

Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state.

(emphasis mine)

So a CHL is clearly a public record, ergo protected under FF&C.

A definition of "record" is "legal instrument", which is:

Legal instrument is a legal term of art that is used for any formally executed written document that can be formally attributed to its author, records and formally expresses a legally enforceable act, process, or contractual duty, obligation, or right, and therefore evidences that act, process, or agreement.

Which also seems to cover CHL in many, many ways.

So it seems valid to ask, if State B says my CHL from State A means nothing in their State, how is that "full faith"?

Obv this isn't considered correct, or some NRA-ILA / SAF lawyer would have been on it long ago. Out of curiosity, what horrible legal flaws exist in my argument? Why would the courts laugh at my claim?

 

[Frank Ettin]

...So a CHL is clearly a public record,..

Actually, in many ways it's not. In many States CHL information is confidential. In any case, a public record is:

n. any information, minutes, files, accounts or other records which a governmental body is required to maintain, and which must be accessible to scrutiny by the public. This includes the files of most legal actions. A court will take "judicial notice" of a public record (including hearsay in the record) introduced as evidence. For example: a recorded deed to show transfer of title or a criminal judgment are both public records.

In any case, can you find any court decision in which it was ruled that State A was required under the Full Faith and Credit Clause to, on the strength of a license issued by State B, allow someone to practice a trade, profession or engage in State A in another other activity requiring under the laws of State A a license issued by State A?

...Obv this isn't considered correct, or some NRA-ILA / SAF lawyer would have been on it long ago. Out of curiosity, what horrible legal flaws exist in my argument? Why would the courts laugh at my claim?...

For one thing, as discussed here, the scope of the application of the Full Faith and Credit Clause has been well settled in the courts:

...The Supreme Court has invoked the clause to police state-court proceedings in three contexts: (1) determining when a state must take jurisdiction over claims that arise in other states; (2) limiting the application of local state law over another state's law in multistate disputes; and (3) recognizing and enforcing judgments rendered in sister-state courts....

And this commentator from Yale Law School notes that there are limitations to the application of the Full Faith and Credit Clause even in the marriage examples I used before:

...nobody bothered to check whether the Full Faith and Credit Clause had actually ever been read to require one state to recognize another state's marriages. It hasn't. Longstanding precedent from around the country holds that a state need not recognize a marriage entered into in another state with different marriage laws if those laws are contrary to strongly held local public policy. The "public policy doctrine," almost as old as this country's legal system, has been applied to foreign marriages between first cousins, persons too recently divorced, persons of different races, and persons under the age of consent. The granting of a marriage license has always been treated differently than a court award, which is indeed entitled to full interstate recognition. Court judgments are entitled to full faith and credit but historically very little interstate recognition has been given to licenses.....

And here's another interesting commentary on the finer points of the Full Faith and Credit Clause:

...Article IV, Sec. 1, has had its principal operation in relation to judgments. Embraced within the relevant discussions are two principal classes of judgments. First, those in which the judgment involved was offered as a basis of proceedings for its own enforcement outside the State where rendered, as for example, when an action for debt is brought in the courts of State B on a judgment for money damages rendered in State A; second, those in which the judgment involved was offered, in conformance with the principle of res judicata, in defense in a new or collateral proceeding growing out of the same facts as the original suit, as for example, when a decree of divorce granted in State A is offered as barring a suit for divorce by the other party to the marriage in the courts of State B....

 

[speedrrracer]

Those are some epic links! I learned a lot about FF&C, thanks