Certified question

In the law of the United States, a certified question is a formal request by one court to one of its sister courts, usually but not always in another jurisdiction, for an opinion on a question of law.

These cases typically arise when the court before which litigation is actually pending is required to decide a matter that turns on the law of another state or jurisdiction. If that other jurisdiction's law is unclear or uncertain, a certified question can then be sent to that jurisdiction's courts to render an opinion on the question of law that arose in the court in which the actual litigation is pending. The courts to whom these questions of law are certified are typically appellate courts or state supreme courts.

Historically, the procedure under which one court certifies a question to another, arises out of the distinction in the law of England between common law courts and equity courts. At one time, these two were separate and parallel legal systems, differing in procedure and the sort of case each had primary jurisdiction over. From time to time, a legal issue would arise in one court that fell within the other's jurisdiction and expertise; in this situation, the two courts could certify legal questions to each other. This remains possible in the state of Delaware, which continues to have a separate Court of Chancery.Charles Dickens made reference to the process of the two separate courts certifying questions to each other as a part of the interminable litigation in Jarndyce v. Jarndyce which figures in the plot of Bleak House:

In Clay v. Sun Insurance Office, Ltd., the United States Supreme Court confronted a situation where a circuit court of appeals could not "make a competent guess" about how the Florida courts would construe an insurance statute. The court observed that the Florida legislature had passed a statute allowing the federal courts to certify questions of state law to the Florida Supreme Court, but that the Florida courts had not yet made a rule establishing procedures under the statute. After the Clay decision, the various states began to adopt statutes or rules allowing for the certification of questions of state law to state courts. The relatively streamlined process of sending a certified question to a state appellate court also relieves federal courts of the unwieldy procedure of Pullman abstention, under which Federal courts abstain from deciding on the constitutionality of state laws while litigation seeking the construction of those laws is pending in state courts. In 1967, a Uniform Act was first proposed to establish a standard procedure for certified questions. In Lehman Bros. v. Schein, the Supreme Court praised the certified question procedure as helping to build a cooperative judicial federalism.

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