Cite as: 516 U. S. 367 (1996)
Opinion of Stevens, J.
on the merits of those claims—would the exception to § 1738 for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction apply. Where, as here, the rendering court in fact had subject-matter jurisdiction, the subject-matter-jurisdiction exception to full faith and credit is simply inapposite. In such a case, the relevance of a federal statute that provides for exclusive federal jurisdiction is not to the state court's possession of jurisdiction per se, but to the existence of a partial repeal of § 1738.8
* * *
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Stevens, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
While I join Parts I, II-A, and II-C of the Court's opinion, and while I also agree with the Court's reasons for concluding that § 27 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 does not create an implied partial repeal of the Full Faith and Credit Act, I join neither Part II-B nor the Court's judgment because I agree with Justice Ginsburg that the question of Delaware law should be addressed by the Court of Appeals in the first instance, and that the Ninth Circuit remains free to consider whether Delaware courts fully and fairly litigated the adequacy of class representation.
8 Kalb v. Feuerstein, 308 U. S. 433 (1940), is not to the contrary. In that case, the federal statute at issue expressly prohibited certain common-law actions from being either instituted or maintained in state court. Id., at 440-441. Thus, by merely entertaining a common-law foreclosure suit, over which it otherwise would have had jurisdiction, the state court violated the terms of the Act. That is not the situation here, where there is no contention that just by entertaining the class action the Delaware court acted in violation of federal law.
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