Second Circuit Should Affirm the Term Paper

The fact that, against completely diverse defendants, Woodrock and Jones could combine their claims to meet the amount in controversy is inconsequential, because the parties lack diversity of citizenship.

9. There are several factors that should be taken into consideration in deciding whether the District of Columbia can, for diversity purposes, be regarded as a state. The most important factor is whether the constitutional diversity requirement would have a substantive impact on the litigants seeking redress in a certain type of court. Because citizens of the District of Columbia are already entitled to bring suit in federal courts, allowing them to be considered citizens of a state for the purpose of establishing diversity jurisdiction does not allow them entry into a different court system. Even more important is the fact that the legislature enacted a law that permitted the District of Columbia and other U.S. territories to be treated as states for the purpose of diversity jurisdiction.Based upon this law, which expands the definition of the word state in the Constitution, it seems clear that the D.C. should be considered a state for diversity jurisdiction purposes. To bolster that idea, it is important to keep in mind that when the Constitution was written, the U.S. did not hold territories; even D.C. had not yet been created. Therefore, at the time it was written, the constitutional language referring to states would have covered all U.S. citizens living in U.S. territory. It seems unlikely that the founding fathers would have desired to exclude those living in D.C., who were most likely to be people working for the government, from the general protections granted to most Americans. Taken together, these concepts support the notion that a person from D.C. should be treated like a state citizen for purposes of diversity jurisdiction......