State Law Claims and Article III in Stern V. Marshall, 131 S. Ct. 2594 (2011)‪.‬

Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution vests "the judicial Power of the United States" in courts whose judges "shall hold their Offices during good Behavior." (1) Bankruptcy courts are presided over by judges who lack such life tenure (2) and so are unable to wield Article III judicial power. Almost three decades ago, in Northern Pipeline Construction Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co., (3) a splintered Supreme Court held that this limitation prevented a bankruptcy court from deciding a state-law contract claim. (4) Over the course of subsequent cases, the Court struggled to define the limits of Article III's prohibition, deploying an expanding set of factors to explain its rulings. (5) Last Term, in Stern v. Marshall, (6) the Supreme Court applied these factors to conclude that a bankruptcy court could not decide a state-law claim for tortious interference. (7) Although the Court insisted that the state-law origin of a claim lacked "talismanic power" (8) in the years between Northern Pipeline and Stern, the Stern majority rightly emphasized that factor in its analysis. As the Court observed, the length and complexity of the litigation at issue in Stern approached Dickensian proportions. (9) Vickie Lynn Marshall (Vickie), also known as Anna Nicole Smith, was the widow of J. Howard Marshall II (J. Howard). (10) E. Pierce Marshall (Pierce) was J. Howard Marshall's son by a previous marriage. (11) Vickie's lawyers alleged--in court and to the press--that J. Howard intended for her to receive the gift of a catchall trust and that Pierce fraudulently sought to defeat that intention. (12) Pierce contended that these statements amounted to tortious defamation. (13)