Why Erie Is An Inherently Conservative Doctrine

We've been backing the proposition that the Erie doctrine concerning federal courts' prediction of state law precludes courts clothed only with diversity jurisdiction from expanding state tort liability in novel ways since just about the beginning of the Blog. However, our analyses have tended to be forward looking. We typically start with the Supreme Court's definitive statement in Day & Zimmerman, Inc. v. Challoner, 423 U.S. 3 (1975), that federal courts are "not free to engraft onto those state rules exceptions or modifications which may commend themselves to the federal court, but which have not commended themselves to the State in which the federal court sits." Id. at 4. We then typically address ourselves to the law of circuit where the infraction arose.