Declaratory Judgments

Business Dictionary: Declaratory Judgment

Judgment from a district court to establish the right of the parties or express the opinion of the court as to the question of law without ordering anything to be done.

Parties bringing actions in courts usually seek active relief, such as an award of money damages or an injunction. Modern courts, however, can also give passive relief that merely defines legal relations through declaratory judgments.

The traditional, restrictive view of the judicial process limited courts to active relief. Moreover, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Willing v. Chicago Auditorium Association (1928), implied that a special barrier to declaratory relief lay in the Constitution's limiting the federal judicial power to cases and controversies. But a practical need for declaratory relief might exist where a dispute has not progressed far enough to authorize active relief or where an aggrieved person does not yet choose to seek active relief; for example, a party to a contract might justifiably want to determine whether certain behavior would be or is a breach. In the 1930s, the Court reversed its previous direction, encouraging and then upholding congressional enactment of the Federal Declaratory Judgment Act of 1934.

So today a federal court may in its discretion give a declaratory remedy in a case that has ripened beyond an abstract question into an actual controversy and that is otherwise within its jurisdiction. Although a state court might be more permissive or restrictive regarding declaratory relief, most states follow the federal approach.