In Faw v. Roberdeau's Executor, the Supreme Court of the United States was asked to decide whether a state court had jurisdiction over an action brought by a citizen of one state against another in which both parties were citizens of different states. The plaintiff argued that since he was not domiciled in the defendant’s home state, and thus could not be sued there, his suit should have been heard in federal court instead. The Court held that although it is true that diversity jurisdiction exists for cases between citizens from different states, this does not mean all such cases must be tried at the federal level; rather, they may also be tried in either party’s home state if certain conditions are met. In this case those conditions were satisfied and therefore the decision of the lower court was affirmed.

In Faw v. Roberdeau's Executor, the Supreme Court was asked to decide whether a state court had jurisdiction over a case involving an executor of an estate from another state. The majority opinion held that the state court did have jurisdiction, but Justice Chase dissented on the grounds that it violated Article III of the Constitution which grants exclusive federal judicial power in cases where citizens of different states are involved. He argued that since this case involved citizens from two different states, only a federal court could hear it and not a state one as decided by the majority opinion. Furthermore, he argued that if such matters were left up to individual states then there would be no uniformity or consistency among them when deciding similar cases and thus chaos would ensue in our legal system.