Editing State court (United States) (section)

==Relationship to federal courts==
{{unreferenced section|date=November 2023}}
Although the [[United States Constitution]] and federal laws override state laws where there is a conflict between federal and state law, state courts are not subordinate to federal courts. Rather, as instruments of separate sovereigns (under the U.S. system of dual sovereignty), they are two parallel sets of courts with different but often overlapping jurisdiction.{{citation needed|date=November 2023}}

As the [[Supreme Court of the United States|U.S. Supreme Court]] recognized in ''[[Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins]]'' (1938), no part of the federal Constitution actually grants federal courts the power to directly decide the content of state law.   Clause 1 of Section 2 of [[Article Three of the United States Constitution]] describes the scope of federal judicial power, but only extended it to "the Laws of the United States" and not the laws of the several or individual states.

The U.S. Supreme Court can but is not required to review final decisions of state courts, after a party exhausts all remedies up to a request for relief from the state's highest appellate court, if the Court believes that the case involves an important question of federal law.  Because of the aforementioned silence in the Constitution (as well as Section 25 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 and successor sections), the Court cannot and ''never'' reviews decisions of state courts that depend entirely on the resolution of a state law issue; there ''must'' be an issue of federal law (such as the federal constitutional right to due process) implicit in the state case before the Court will even agree to hear it.  Since there really is no such issue in the vast majority of state cases, the decision of the state supreme court in such cases is effectively final, as any petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court will be summarily denied without comment.