Commonwealth v. Lowe

DOWLING, J.,

Our federal Union — on whose maintenance so many men and women have expended their blood and energy over the past two centuries — is a delicate equipoise of reciprocal rights, duties and divisions of authority. One of the most crucial of these is what has come to be known as the “full faith and credit” clause of the Constitution, which holds that each state will recognize the validity of the statutes, licensing procedures and court decrees of the others. This is often no simple proposition: American history has been shaken from time to time by legal crises stemming *597from this…