Preclusive Jurisdictional Dismissals

Every litigant deserves their day in court. At the same time, litigants cannot endlessly go to court on the same matter. A complex body of preclusion law balances these fundamental tenets by examining when adjudication of a matter precludes subsequent relitigation. This body of law has evolved over time to preserve the day-in-court ideal in a way that is sensitive to the threats that relitigation present to judicial efficiency, fair adjudication, and repose. Modern preclusion law has settled on a pragmatic approach: where a court has issued a final judgment on the merits but erroneously assumed jurisdiction, relitigation may still be fruitless and justly precluded. However, this pragmatic approach, and the rich body of scholarship accompanying it, vanishes in cases where the rendering court declares that it lacks jurisdiction and does not attempt to decide the case on the merits. Courts confronted with the preclusive effect of such jurisdictional dismissals default to the longstanding view that such dismissals carry no preclusive effect on relitigation on the merits. This Note challenges this bright-line rule by arguing that where a jurisdictional dismissal is predicated on a determination that is intertwined with the merits, the values underlying preclusion should take priority.