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The Lincoln Mills decision authorizes a whole new body of federal `` common law '' which, as Mr. Justice Frankfurter pointed out in dissent, leads to one of the following `` incongruities '': `` ( ( 1 ) conflict in federal and state court interpretations of collective bargaining agreements ; ;

( 2 ) displacement of state law by federal law in state courts in all actions regarding collective bargaining agreements ; ;

or ( 3 ) exclusion of state court jurisdiction over these matters ''.

The Justice's elaborate examination of the legislative history of the provision in question suggests that Congress' purpose was merely to make unions suable.

With a few exceptions, the lawmakers seemed unaware of the technical problems of federal jurisdiction involved -- to say nothing of the delegation of lawmaking power to judges.

To avoid these constitutional difficulties, Mr. Justice Frankfurter was prepared to read the Taft-Hartley provision as concerned with diversity, rather than federal question, jurisdiction.

This would satisfy what presumably was Congress' major purpose -- the suability of unions.

It would also leave intact the states' traditional authority in the realm of contract law.

( As we have seen, the Erie and York decisions require federal courts in diversity cases to follow state decisional rules.

) Here again Mr. Justice Frankfurter could not lightly accept the principle of wholesale judicial legislation.

If Congress wants to displace the states from areas which they have customarily occupied, let it do so knowingly and explicitly.

And let it do its own lawmaking and not leave that to federal judges.

Does Lincoln Mills suggest that if Congress granted jurisdiction over interstate divorce cases, the federal courts would be authorized to fashion a national law for the dissolution of marriages??