In the case of Hughes v. Fetter (1950), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Wisconsin statute which barred out-of-state wrongful death claims was unconstitutional, violating the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution. The plaintiff, an Illinois resident, had filed a lawsuit in Wisconsin for his son's death caused by negligence in Illinois. However, under Wisconsin law at that time, only deaths caused within its borders could be litigated there. The court held that this restriction unconstitutionally interfered with interstate judicial administration because it failed to respect judgments and public acts from other states as required by Article IV Section 1 of the Constitution - also known as "Full Faith and Credit Clause". This clause requires each state to recognize and respect legislative acts, public records, and judicial decisions made in other states within United States.

In the dissenting opinion for Hughes v. Fetter, Justice Frankfurter argued that Wisconsin had a legitimate interest in applying its own law to wrongful death cases involving its residents, even if the fatal accident occurred out of state. He contended that it was not an unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce for a state to apply its own laws and procedures within its jurisdiction. The majority's decision, he believed, undermined states' rights by forcing them to recognize claims under foreign tort law when they might have valid reasons not to do so - such as differences in legal standards or potential difficulties with evidence collection from another jurisdiction. Furthermore, he expressed concern about the implications of this ruling on other areas where states traditionally exercised their sovereign powers like probate and divorce proceedings.