Virginia Robinson

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Comment
Volume 89.8
State Policy in Federal Courts: Stabilizing the Burford Abstention Doctrine
Virginia Robinson
B.S. 2012, Auburn University; B.A. 2012, Auburn University; J.D. Candidate 2023, The University of Chicago Law School.

I would like to thank Professor Bridget Fahey and the editors and staff of the University of Chicago Law Review for their thoughtful advice and insight. 

The federal abstention doctrines govern the narrow circumstances under which a district court can decline to hear a case even though it has proper jurisdiction. One of those doctrines—Burford abstention—has generated a morass of confusion over when it applies and what goals it is meant to achieve. To find a way out of the morass, this Comment looks at contemporaneous developments in doctrines of federal court review—and at the procedural history of Burford itself—to pinpoint the precise problem that Burford abstention was created to solve.