522 U.S. 222 (1998)

BAKER et al.
v.
GENERAL MOTORS CORP.

No. 96-653.

United States Supreme Court.

Argued October 15, 1997. Decided January 13, 1998. CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

*223 *224 *225 Ginsburg, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and Stevens, Souter, and Breyer, JJ., joined. Scalia, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, post, p. 241. Kennedy, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which O'Connor and Thomas, JJ., joined, post, p. 243.

Laurence H. Tribe argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the briefs were Jonathan S. Massey, James W. Jeans, Sr., David L. Shapiro, Robert L. Langdon, and J. Kent Emison.

Paul T. Cappuccio argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were Kenneth W. Starr, Richard A. Cordray, Jay P. Lefkowitz, Thomas A. Gottschalk, and James A. Durkin.^[*]

Justice Ginsburg, delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case concerns the authority of one State's court to order that a witness' testimony shall not be heard in any *226 court of the United States. In settlement of claims and counterclaims precipitated by the discharge of Ronald Elwell, a former General Motors Corporation (GM) engineering analyst, GM paid Elwell an undisclosed sum of money, and the parties agreed to a permanent injunction. As stipulated by GM and Elwell and entered by a Michigan County Court, the injunction prohibited Elwell from "testifying, without the prior written consent of [GM], . . .as . . . a witness of any kind . . .in any litigation already filed, or to be filed in the future, involving [GM] as an owner, seller, manufacturer and/or designer . . . ." GM separately agreed, however, that if Elwell were ordered to testify by a court or other tribunal, such testimony would not be actionable as a violation of the Michigan court's injunction or the GM-Elwell agreement.

After entry of the stipulated injunction in Michigan, Elwell was subpoenaed to testify in a product liability action commenced in Missouri by plaintiffs who were not involved in the Michigan case. The question presented is whether the national full faith and credit command bars Elwell's testimony in the Missouri case. We hold that Elwell may testify in the Missouri action without offense to the full faith and credit requirement.

I

Two lawsuits, initiated by different parties in different States, gave rise to the full faith and credit issue before us. One suit involved a severed employment relationship, the other, a wrongful-death complaint. We describe each controversy in turn.

A

The Suit Between Elwell and General Motors

Ronald Elwell was a GM employee from 1959 until 1989. For 15 of those years, beginning in 1971, Elwell was assigned to the Engineering Analysis Group, which studied the performance of GM vehicles, most particularly vehicles involved in product liability litigation. Elwell's studies and research concentrated on vehicular fires. He assisted in *227 improving the performance of GM products by suggesting changes in fuel line designs. During the course of his employment, Elwell frequently aided GM lawyers engaged in defending GM against product liability actions. Beginning in 1987, the Elwell-GM employment relationship soured. GM and Elwell first negotiated an agreement under which Elwell would retire after serving as a GM consultant for two years. When the time came for Elwell to retire, however, disagreement again surfaced and continued into 1991.

In May 1991, plaintiffs in a product liability action pending in Georgia deposed Elwell. The Georgia case involved a GM pickup truck fuel tank that burst into flames just after a collision. During the deposition, and over the objection of counsel for GM, Elwell gave testimony that differed markedly from testimony he had given when serving as an in-house expert witness for GM. Specifically, Elwell had several times defended the safety and crashworthiness of the pickup's fuel system. On deposition in the Georgia action, however, Elwell testified that the GM pickup truck fuel system was inferior in comparison to competing products.

A month later, Elwell sued GM in a Michigan County Court, alleging wrongful discharge and other tort and contract claims. GM counterclaimed, contending that Elwell had breached his fiduciary duty to GM by disclosing privileged and confidential information and misappropriating documents. In response to GM's motion for a preliminary injunction, and after a hearing, the Michigan trial court, on November 22, 1991, enjoined Elwell from

"consulting or discussing with or disclosing to any person any of General Motors Corporation's trade secrets[,] confidential information or matters of attorney-client work product relating in any manner to the subject matter of any products liability litigation whether already filed or [to be] filed in the future which Ronald Elwell received, had knowledge of, or was entrusted with during *228 his employments with General Motors Corporation." Elwell v. General Motors Corp., No. 91-115946NZ (Wayne Cty.) (Order Granting in Part, Denying in Part Injunctive Relief, pp. 1-2), App. 9-10.

In August 1992, GM and Elwell entered into a settlement under which Elwell received an undisclosed sum of money. The parties also stipulated to the entry of a permanent injunction and jointly filed with the Michigan court both the stipulation and the agreed-upon injunction. The proposed permanent injunction contained two proscriptions. The first substantially repeated the terms of the preliminary injunction; the second comprehensively enjoined Elwell from

"testifying, without the prior written consent of General Motors Corporation, either upon deposition or at trial, as an expert witness, or as a witness of any kind, and from consulting with attorneys or their agents in any litigation already filed, or to be filed in the future, involving General Motors Corporation as an owner, seller, manufacturer and/or designer of the product(s) in issue." Order Dismissing Plaintiff's Complaint and Granting Permanent Injunction (Wayne Cty., Aug. 26, 1992), p. 2, App. 30.

To this encompassing bar, the consent injunction made an exception: "[This provision] shall not operate to interfere with the jurisdiction of the Court in . . . Georgia [where the litigation involving the fuel tank was still pending]." Ibid. (emphasis added). No other noninterference provision appears in the stipulated decree. On August 26, 1992, with no further hearing, the Michigan court entered the injunction precisely as tendered by the parties.^[1]

Although the stipulated injunction contained an exception only for the Georgia action then pending, Elwell and GM included in their separate settlement agreement a more general *229 limitation. If a court or other tribunal ordered Elwell to testify, his testimony would "in no way" support a GM action for violation of the injunction or the settlement agreement:

"`It is agreed that [Elwell's] appearance and testimony, if any, at hearings on Motions to quash subpoena or at deposition or trial or other official proceeding, if the Court or other tribunal so orders, will in no way form a basis for an action in violation of the Permanent Injunction or this Agreement.' " Settlement Agreement, p. 10, as quoted in 86 F. 3d 811, 820, n. 11 (CA8 1996).

In the six years since the Elwell-GM settlement, Elwell has testified against GM both in Georgia (pursuant to the exception contained in the injunction) and in several other jurisdictions in which Elwell has been subpoenaed to testify.

B

The Suit Between the Bakers and General Motors

Having described the Elwell-GM employment termination litigation, we next summarize the wrongful-death complaint underlying this case. The decedent, Beverly Garner, was a front-seat passenger in a 1985 Chevrolet S-10 Blazer involved in a February 1990 Missouri highway accident. The Blazer's engine caught fire, and both driver and passenger died. In September 1991, Garner's sons, Kenneth and Steven Baker, commenced a wrongful-death product liability action against GM in a Missouri state court. The Bakers alleged that a faulty fuel pump in the 1985 Blazer caused the engine fire that killed their mother. GM removed the case to federal court on the basis of the parties' diverse citizenship. On the merits, GM asserted that the fuel pump was neither faulty nor the cause of the fire, and that collision impact injuries alone caused Garner's death.

The Bakers sought both to depose Elwell and to call him as a witness at trial. GM objected to Elwell's appearance as a deponent or trial witness on the ground that the Michigan *230 injunction barred his testimony. In response, the Bakers urged that the Michigan injunction did not override a Missouri subpoena for Elwell's testimony. The Bakers further noted that, under the Elwell-GM settlement agreement, Elwell could testify if a court so ordered, and such testimony would not be actionable as a violation of the Michigan injunction.

After in camera review of the Michigan injunction and the settlement agreement, the Federal District Court in Missouri allowed the Bakers to depose Elwell and to call him as a witness at trial. Responding to GM's objection, the District Court stated alternative grounds for its ruling: (1) Michigan's injunction need not be enforced because blocking Elwell's testimony would violate Missouri's "public policy," which shielded from disclosure only privileged or otherwise confidential information; (2) just as the injunction could be modified in Michigan, so a court elsewhere could modify the decree.

At trial, Elwell testified in support of the Bakers' claim that the alleged defect in the fuel pump system contributed to the postcollision fire. In addition, he identified and described a 1973 internal GM memorandum bearing on the risk of fuel-fed engine fires. Following trial, the jury awarded the Bakers $11.3 million in damages, and the District Court entered judgment on the jury's verdict.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed the District Court's judgment, ruling, inter alia, that Elwell's testimony should not have been admitted. 86 F. 3d 811 (1996). Assuming, arguendo, the existence of a public policy exception to the full faith and credit command, the Court of Appeals concluded that the District Court erroneously relied on Missouri's policy favoring disclosure of relevant, nonprivileged information, see id. , at 818-819, for Missouri has an "equally strong public policy in favor of full faith and credit," id., at 819.

The Eighth Circuit also determined that the evidence was insufficient to show that the Michigan court would modify *231 the injunction barring Elwell's testimony. See id., at 819— 820. The Court of Appeals observed that the Michigan court "has been asked on several occasions to modify the injunction, [but] has yet to do so," and noted that, if the Michigan court did not intend to block Elwell's testimony in cases like the Bakers', "the injunction would . . . have been unnecessary." Id., at 820.

We granted certiorari to decide whether the full faith and credit requirement stops the Bakers, who were not parties to the Michigan proceeding, from obtaining Elwell's testimony in their Missouri wrongful-death action. 520 U. S. 1142 (1997).^[2]

II

A

The Constitution's Full Faith and Credit Clause provides:

"Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof." Art. IV, § 1.^[3]

Pursuant to that Clause, Congress has prescribed:

"Such Acts, records and judicial proceedings or copies thereof, so authenticated, shall have the same full faith and credit in every court within the United States and its Territories and Possessions as they have by law or *232 usage in the courts of such State, Territory or Possession from which they are taken." 28 U. S. C. § 1738.^[4]

The animating purpose of the full faith and credit command, as this Court explained in Milwaukee County v. M. E. White Co., 296 U. S. 268 (1935),

"was to alter the status of the several states as independent foreign sovereignties, each free to ignore obligations created under the laws or by the judicial proceedings of the others, and to make them integral parts of a single nation throughout which a remedy upon a just obligation might be demanded as of right, irrespective of the state of its origin." Id., at 277.

See also Estin v. Estin, 334 U. S. 541, 546 (1948) (the Full Faith and Credit Clause "substituted a command for the earlier principles of comity and thus basically altered the status of the States as independent sovereigns").

Our precedent differentiates the credit owed to laws (legislative measures and common law) and to judgments. "In numerous cases this Court has held that credit must be given to the judgment of another state although the forum would not be required to entertain the suit on which the judgment was founded." Milwaukee County, 296 U. S., at 277. The Full Faith and Credit Clause does not compel "a state to substitute the statutes of other states for its own statutes dealing with a subject matter concerning which it is competent to legislate." Pacific Employers Ins. Co. v. Industrial Accident Comm'n, 306 U. S. 493, 501 (1939); see Phillips *233 Petroleum Co. v. Shutts, 472 U. S. 797, 818-819 (1985). Regarding judgments, however, the full faith and credit obligation is exacting. A final judgment in one State, if rendered by a court with adjudicatory authority over the subject matter and persons governed by the judgment, qualifies for recognition throughout the land. For claim and issue preclusion (res judicata) purposes,^[5] in other words, the judgment of the rendering State gains nationwide force. See, e. g., Matsushita Elec. Industrial Co. v. Epstein, 516 U. S. 367, 373 (1996); Kremer v. Chemical Constr. Corp., 456 U. S. 461, 485 (1982); see also Reese & Johnson, The Scope of Full Faith and Credit to Judgments, 49 Colum. L. Rev. 153 (1949).

A court may be guided by the forum State's "public policy" in determining the law applicable to a controversy. See Nevada v. Hall, 440 U. S. 410, 421-424 (1979).^[6] But our decisions support no roving "public policy exception" to the full faith and credit due judgments. See Estin, 334 U. S., at 546 (Full Faith and Credit Clause "ordered submission . . . even to hostile policies reflected in the judgment of another State, because the practical operation of the federal system, which the Constitution designed, demanded it."); Fauntleroy v. Lum, 210 U. S. 230, 237 (1908) (judgment of Missouri court *234 entitled to full faith and credit in Mississippi even if Missouri judgment rested on a misapprehension of Mississippi law). In assuming the existence of a ubiquitous "public policy exception" permitting one State to resist recognition of another State's judgment, the District Court in the Bakers' wrongful-death action, see supra, at 230, misread our precedent. "The full faith and credit clause is one of the provisions incorporated into the Constitution by its framers for the purpose of transforming an aggregation of independent, sovereign States into a nation." Sherrer v. Sherrer, 334 U. S. 343, 355 (1948). We are "aware of [no] considerations of local policy or law which could rightly be deemed to impair the force and effect which the full faith and credit clause and the Act of Congress require to be given to [a money] judgment outside the state of its rendition." Magnolia Petroleum Co. v. Hunt, 320 U. S. 430, 438 (1943).

The Court has never placed equity decrees outside the full faith and credit domain. Equity decrees for the payment of money have long been considered equivalent to judgments at law entitled to nationwide recognition. See, e. g., Barber v. Barber, 323 U. S. 77 (1944) (unconditional adjudication of petitioner's right to recover a sum of money is entitled to full faith and credit); see also A. Ehrenzweig, Conflict of Laws § 51, p. 182 (rev. ed. 1962) (describing as "indefensible" the old doctrine that an equity decree, because it does not "merge" the claim into the judgment, does not qualify for recognition). We see no reason why the preclusive effects of an adjudication on parties and those "in privity" with them, i. e., claim preclusion and issue preclusion (res judicata and collateral estoppel),^[7] should differ depending solely upon the type of relief sought in a civil action. Cf. Barber, 323 *235 U. S., at 87 (Jackson, J., concurring) (Full Faith and Credit Clause and its implementing statute speak not of "judgments" but of "`judicial proceedings' without limitation"); Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 2 (providing for "one form of action to be known as `civil action,' " in lieu of discretely labeled actions at law and suits in equity).

Full faith and credit, however, does not mean that States must adopt the practices of other States regarding the time, manner, and mechanisms for enforcing judgments. Enforcement measures do not travel with the sister state judgment as preclusive effects do; such measures remain subject to the evenhanded control of forum law. See McElmoyle ex rel. Bailey v. Cohen, 13 Pet. 312, 325 (1839) (judgment may be enforced only as "laws [of enforcing forum] may permit"); see also Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws § 99 (1969) ("The local law of the forum determines the methods by which a judgment of another state is enforced.").^[8]

Orders commanding action or inaction have been denied enforcement in a sister State when they purported to accomplish an official act within the exclusive province of that other State or interfered with litigation over which the ordering State had no authority. Thus, a sister State's decree concerning land ownership in another State has been held ineffective to transfer title, see Fall v. Eastin, 215 U. S. 1 (1909), although such a decree may indeed preclusively adjudicate the rights and obligations running between the parties to the foreign litigation, see, e. g., Robertson v. Howard, 229 U. S. 254, 261 (1913) ("[I]t may not be doubted that a *236 court of equity in one State in a proper case could compel a defendant before it to convey property situated in another State."). And antisuit injunctions regarding litigation elsewhere, even if compatible with due process as a direction constraining parties to the decree, see Cole v. Cunningham, 133 U. S. 107 (1890), in fact have not controlled the second court's actions regarding litigation in that court. See, e. g., James v. Grand Trunk Western R. Co., 14 Ill. 2d 356, 372, 152 N. E. 2d 858, 867 (1958); see also E. Scoles & P. Hay, Conflict of Laws § 24.21, p. 981 (2d ed. 1992) (observing that antisuit injunction "does not address, and thus has no preclusive effect on, the merits of the litigation [in the second forum]").^[9] Sanctions for violations of an injunction, in any event, are generally administered by the court that issued the injunction. See, e. g., Stiller v. Hardman, 324 F. 2d 626, 628 (CA2 1963) (nonrendition forum enforces monetary relief portion of a judgment but leaves enforcement of injunctive portion to rendition forum).

*237 B

With these background principles in view, we turn to the dimensions of the order GM relies upon to stop Elwell's testimony. Specifically, we take up the question: What matters did the Michigan injunction legitimately conclude?

As earlier recounted, see supra, at 228-229, the parties before the Michigan County Court, Elwell and GM, submitted an agreed-upon injunction, which the presiding judge signed.^[10] While no issue was joined, expressly litigated, and determined in the Michigan proceeding,^[11] that order is claim preclusive between Elwell and GM. Elwell's claim for *238 wrongful discharge and his related contract and tort claims have "merged in the judgment," and he cannot sue again to recover more. See Parklane Hosiery Co. v. Shore, 439 U. S. 322, 326, n. 5 (1979) ("Under the doctrine of res judicata, a judgment on the merits in a prior suit bars a second suit involving the same parties or their privies based on the same cause of action."); see also Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 17 (1980). Similarly, GM cannot sue Elwell elsewhere on the counterclaim GM asserted in Michigan. See id., § 23, Comment a, p. 194 ("A defendant who interposes a counterclaim is, in substance, a plaintiff, as far as the counterclaim is concerned, and the plaintiff is, in substance, a defendant.").

Michigan's judgment, however, cannot reach beyond the Elwell-GM controversy to control proceedings against GM brought in other States, by other parties, asserting claims the merits of which Michigan has not considered. Michigan has no power over those parties, and no basis for commanding them to become intervenors in the Elwell-GM dispute. See Martin v. Wilks, 490 U. S. 755, 761-763 (1989). Most essentially, Michigan lacks authority to control courts elsewhere by precluding them, in actions brought by strangers to the Michigan litigation, from determining for themselves what witnesses are competent to testify and what evidence is relevant and admissible in their search for the truth. See Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws §§ 137-139 (1969 and rev. 1988) (forum's own law governs witness competence and grounds for excluding evidence); cf. Société Nationale Industrielle Aérospatiale v. United States Dist. Court for Southern Dist. of Iowa, 482 U. S. 522, 544, n. 29 (1987) (foreign "blocking statute" barring disclosure of certain information "do[es] not deprive an American court of the power to order a party subject to its jurisdiction to produce [the information]"); United States v. First Nat. City Bank, 396 F. 2d 897 (CA2 1968) (New York bank may not refuse to produce records of its German branch, even though doing so might subject the bank to civil liability under German law).

*239 As the District Court recognized, Michigan's decree could operate against Elwell to preclude him from volunteering his testimony. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 26a—27a. But a Michigan court cannot, by entering the injunction to which Elwell and GM stipulated, dictate to a court in another jurisdiction that evidence relevant in the Bakers' case—a controversy to which Michigan is foreign—shall be inadmissible. This conclusion creates no general exception to the full faith and credit command, and surely does not permit a State to refuse to honor a sister state judgment based on the forum's choice of law or policy preferences. Rather, we simply recognize that, just as the mechanisms for enforcing a judgment do not travel with the judgment itself for purposes of full faith and credit, see McElmoyle ex rel. Bailey v. Cohen, 13 Pet. 312 (1839); see also Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws § 99, and just as one State's judgment cannot automatically transfer title to land in another State, see Fall v. Eastin, 215 U. S. 1 (1909), similarly the Michigan decree cannot determine evidentiary issues in a lawsuit brought by parties who were not subject to the jurisdiction of the Michigan court. Cf. United States v. Nixon, 418 U. S. 683, 710 (1974) ("[E]xceptions to the demand for every man's evidence are not lightly created nor expansively construed, for they are in derogation of the search for truth.").^[12]

*240 The language of the consent decree is informative in this regard. Excluding the then-pending Georgia action from the ban on testimony by Elwell without GM's permission, the decree provides that it "shall not operate to interfere with the jurisdiction of the Court in . . .Georgia." Elwell v. General Motors Corp., No. 91-115946NZ (Wayne Cty.) (Order Dismissing Plaintiff's Complaint and Granting Permanent Injunction, p. 2), App. 30 (emphasis added). But if the Michigan order, extended to the Georgia case, would have "interfer[ed] with the jurisdiction" of the Georgia court, Michigan's ban would, in the same way, "interfere with the jurisdiction" of courts in other States in cases similar to the one pending in Georgia.

In line with its recognition of the interference potential of the consent decree, GM provided in the settlement agreement that, if another court ordered Elwell to testify, his testimony would "in no way" render him vulnerable to suit in Michigan for violation of the injunction or agreement. See 86 F. 3d, at 815, 820, n. 11. The Eighth Circuit regarded this settlement agreement provision as merely a concession by GM that "some courts might fail to extend full faith and credit to the [Michigan] injunction." Ibid. As we have explained, however, Michigan's power does not reach into a Missouri courtroom to displace the forum's own determination whether to admit or exclude evidence relevant in the Bakers' wrongful-death case before it. In that light, we see no altruism in GM's agreement not to institute contempt or breach-of-contract proceedings against Elwell in Michigan for giving subpoenaed testimony elsewhere. Rather, we find it telling that GM ruled out resort to the court that entered the injunction, for injunctions are ordinarily enforced by the enjoining court, not by a surrogate tribunal. See supra, at 236.

In sum, Michigan has no authority to shield a witness from another jurisdiction's subpoena power in a case involving persons and causes outside Michigan's governance. Recognition, *241 under full faith and credit, is owed to dispositions Michigan has authority to order. But a Michigan decree cannot command obedience elsewhere on a matter the Michigan court lacks authority to resolve. See Thomas v. Washington Gas Light Co., 448 U. S. 261, 282-283 (1980) (plurality opinion) ("Full faith and credit must be given to [a] determination that [a State's tribunal] had the authority to make; but by a parity of reasoning, full faith and credit need not be given to determinations that it had no power to make.").

* * *

For the reasons stated, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

Justice Scalia, concurring in the judgment.

I agree with the Court that enforcement measures do not travel with sister-state judgments as preclusive effects do. Ante, at 235. It has long been established that "the judgment of a state Court cannot be enforced out of the state by an execution issued within it." McElmoyle ex rel. Bailey v. Cohen, 13 Pet. 312, 325 (1839). To recite that principle is to decide this case.

General Motors asked a District Court in Missouri to enforce a Michigan injunction. The Missouri court was no more obliged to enforce the Michigan injunction by preventing Elwell from presenting his testimony than it was obliged to enforce it by holding Elwell in contempt. The Full Faith and Credit Clause "`did not make the judgments of other States domestic judgments to all intents and purposes, but only gave a general validity, faith, and credit to them, as evidence. No execution can issue upon such judgments without a new suit in the tribunals of other States.' " Thompson v. Whitman, 18 Wall. 457, 462-463 (1874) (emphasis *242 added) (quoting J. Story, Conflict of Laws § 609 (7th ed. 1872)). A judgment or decree of one State, to be sure, may be grounds for an action (or a defense to one) in another. But the Clause and its implementing statute

"establish a rule of evidence, rather than of jurisdiction. While they make the record of a judgment, rendered after due notice in one State, conclusive evidence in the courts of another State, or of the United States, of the matter adjudged, they do not affect the jurisdiction, either of the court in which the judgment is rendered, or of the court in which it is offered in evidence. Judgments recovered in one State of the Union, when proved in the courts of another government, whether state or national, within the United States, differ from judgments recovered in a foreign country in no other respect than in not being reexaminable on their merits, nor impeachable for fraud in obtaining them, if rendered by a court having jurisdiction of the cause and of the parties." Wisconsin v. Pelican Ins. Co., 127 U. S. 265, 291-292 (1888) (citation omitted).

The judgment that General Motors obtained in Michigan "`does not carry with it, into another State, the efficacy of a judgment upon property or persons, to be enforced by execution. To give it the force of a judgment in another State, it must be made a judgment there; and can only be executed in the latter as its laws may permit.' " Lynde v. Lynde, 181 U. S. 183, 187 (1901) (quoting McElmoyle, supra, at 325). See, e. g., Watts v. Waddle, 6 Pet. 389, 392 (1832), a case involving a suit to obtain an equity decree ordering the conveyance of land, duplicating such a decree already issued in another State.

Because neither the Full Faith and Credit Clause nor its implementing statute requires Missouri to execute the injunction issued by the courts of Michigan, I concur in the judgment.

*243 Justice Kennedy, with whom Justice O'Connor and Justice Thomas join, concurring in the judgment.

I concur in the judgment. In my view the case is controlled by well-settled full faith and credit principles which render the majority's extended analysis unnecessary and, with all due respect, problematic in some degree. This separate opinion explains my approach.

I

The majority, of course, is correct to hold that when a judgment is presented to the courts of a second State it may not be denied enforcement based upon some disagreement with the laws of the State of rendition. Full faith and credit forbids the second State to question a judgment on these grounds. There can be little doubt of this proposition. We have often recognized the second State's obligation to give effect to another State's judgments even when the law underlying those judgments contravenes the public policy of the second State. See, e. g., Estin v. Estin, 334 U. S. 541, 544-546 (1948); Sherrer v. Sherrer, 334 U. S. 343, 354-355 (1948); Magnolia Petroleum Co. v. Hunt, 320 U. S. 430, 438 (1943); Williams v. North Carolina, 317 U. S. 287, 294-295 (1942); Fauntleroy v. Lum, 210 U. S. 230, 237 (1908).

My concern is that the majority, having stated the principle, proceeds to disregard it by announcing two broad exceptions. First, the majority would allow courts outside the issuing State to decline to enforce those judgments "purport[ing] to accomplish an official act within the exclusive province of [a sister] State." Ante, at 235. Second, the basic rule of full faith and credit is said not to cover injunctions "interfer[ing] with litigation over which the ordering State had no authority." Ibid. The exceptions the majority recognizes are neither consistent with its rejection of a public policy exception to full faith and credit nor in accord with established rules implementing the Full Faith and Credit Clause. As employed to resolve this case, furthermore, the *244 exceptions to full faith and credit have a potential for disrupting judgments, and this ought to give us considerable pause.

Our decisions have been careful not to foreclose all effect for the types of injunctions the majority would place outside the ambit of full faith and credit. These authorities seem to be disregarded by today's holding. For example, the majority chooses to discuss the extent to which courts may compel the conveyance of property in other jurisdictions. That subject has proved to be quite difficult. Some of our cases uphold actions by state courts affecting land outside their territorial reach. E. g., Robertson v. Howard, 229 U. S. 254, 261 (1913) ("[I]t may not be doubted that a court of equity in one State in a proper case could compel a defendant before it to convey property situated in another State"); see also Carpenter v. Strange, 141 U. S. 87, 105-106 (1891); Muller v. Dows, 94 U. S. 444, 449 (1877); Massie v. Watts, 6 Cranch 148 (1810). See generally 11A C. Wright, A. Miller, & M. Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2945, pp. 98-102 (2d ed. 1995); Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws § 102, Comment d (1969); Reese, Full Faith and Credit to Foreign Equity Decrees, 42 Iowa L. Rev. 183, 199-200 (1957). Nor have we undertaken before today to announce an exception which denies full faith and credit based on the principle that the prior judgment interferes with litigation pending in another jurisdiction. See, e. g., Cole v. Cunningham, 133 U. S. 107, 116— 117 (1890); Simon v. Southern R. Co., 236 U. S. 115, 122 (1915); cf. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co. v. Kepner, 314 U. S. 44, 51-52 (1941); Donovan v. Dallas, 377 U. S. 408, 415-418 (1964) (Harlan, J., dissenting). See generally Reese, supra, at 198 ("[T]he Supreme Court has not yet had occasion to determine whether [the practice of ignoring antisuit injunctions] is consistent with full faith and credit"). As a general matter, there is disagreement among the state courts as to their duty to recognize decrees enjoining proceedings in other courts. See Schopler, Extraterritorial recognition of, and propriety of counterinjunction against, injunction *245 against actions in courts of other states, 74 A. L. R. 2d 831— 834, §§ 3-4 (1960 and Supp. 1986).

Subjects which are at once so fundamental and so delicate as these ought to be addressed only in a case necessarily requiring their discussion, and even then with caution lest we announce rules which will not be sound in later application. See Restatement, supra, § 102, Comment c ("The Supreme Court of the United States has not had occasion to determine whether fullfaith and credit requires a State of the United States to enforce a valid judgment of a sister State that orders the doing of an act other than the payment of money or that enjoins the doing of an act"); E. Scoles & P. Hay, Conflict of Laws § 24.9, p. 964 (2d ed. 1992) (noting that interstate recognition of equity decrees other than divorce decrees and decrees ordering payment of money "has been a matter of some uncertainty"). We might be required to hold, if some future case raises the issue, that an otherwise valid judgment cannot intrude upon essential processes of courts outside the issuing State in certain narrow circumstances, but we need not announce or define that principle here. Even if some qualification of full faith and credit were required where the judicial processes of a second State are sought to be controlled in their procedural and institutional aspects, the Court's discussion does not provide sufficient guidance on how this exception should be construed in light of our precedents. The majority's broad review of these matters does not articulate the rationale underlying its conclusions. In the absence of more elaboration, it is unclear what it is about the particular injunction here that renders it undeserving of full faith and credit. The Court's reliance upon unidentified principles to justify omitting certain types of injunctions from the doctrine's application leaves its decision in uneasy tension with its own rejection of a broad public policy exception to full faith and credit.

The following example illustrates the uncertainty surrounding the majority's approach. Suppose the Bakers had anticipated the need for Elwell's testimony in Missouri and *246 had appeared in a Michigan court to litigate the privileged character of the testimony it sought to elicit. Assume further the law on privilege were the same in both jurisdictions. If Elwell, General Motors (GM), and the Bakers were before the Michigan court and Michigan law gave its own injunction preclusive effect, the Bakers could not relitigate the point, if general principles of issue preclusion control. Perhaps the argument can be made, as the majority appears to say, that the integrity of Missouri's judicial processes demands a rule allowing relitigation of the issue; but, for the reasons given below, we need not confront this interesting question.

In any event, the rule would be an exception. Full faith and credit requires courts to do more than provide for direct enforcement of the judgments issued by other States. It also "requires federal courts to give the same preclusive effect to state court judgments that those judgments would be given in the courts of the State from which the judgments emerged." Kremer v. Chemical Constr. Corp., 456 U. S. 461, 466 (1982); accord, Parsons Steel, Inc. v. First Alabama Bank, 474 U. S. 518, 525 (1986); Marrese v. American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, 470 U. S. 373, 380-381, 384 (1985); Migra v. Warren City School Dist. Bd. of Ed., 465 U. S. 75, 81 (1984); Haring v. Prosise, 462 U. S. 306, 313 (1983); Allen v. McCurry, 449 U. S. 90, 96 (1980). Through full faith and credit, "the local doctrines of res judicata, speaking generally, become a part of