<P> Full faith and credit ought to be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings, of every other state; and the legislature shall, by general laws, prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings, shall be proved, and the effect which judgments, obtained in one state, shall have in another . </P> <P> After several further modifications, the Full Faith and Credit Clause assumed the form in which it remains today . During the ratification process, James Madison remarked further on this subject, in Federalist No. 42 . He wrote that the corresponding clause in the Articles of Confederation was "extremely indeterminate, and can be of little importance under any interpretation which it will bear ." Of the expanded clause in the Constitution, Madison wrote that it established a power that "may be rendered a very convenient instrument of justice, and be particularly beneficial on the borders of contiguous States ." </P> <P> In 1790, shortly after the Constitution had been ratified, Congress took action under the Full Faith and Credit Clause, enacting that "the records and judicial proceedings, authenticated as aforesaid, shall have such faith and credit given to them in every Court within the United States, as they have by law or usage in the Courts of the state from whence the said records are or shall be taken ." In 1813, the Supreme Court interpreted this federal statute, in the leading case of Mills v. Duryee . Justice Joseph Story wrote for the Court that it was the federal statute (rather than the constitutional provision) that made records from one state effective in another state: </P> <P> It is argued, that this act provides only for the admission of such records as evidence, but does not declare the effect of such evidence, when admitted . This argument cannot be supported . The act declares, that the record, duly authenticated, shall have such faith and credit as it has in the state court from whence it is taken . If in such court it has the faith and credit of evidence of the highest nature, viz., record evidence, it must have the same faith and credit in every other court . </P>

The full faith and credit clause of the constitution declares that