North Carolina is the only state across the nation to lack a federal certification mechanism. Nelson Mullins North Carolina Board Certified Appellate Practice Specialists Lorin Lapidus and Martin Warf have sought to change that fact.

Lapidus and Warf have authored a new article, “Closing the Certified Question Loop: An Approach For Establishing A Constitutional Certification Mechanism in North Carolina,” which appears in the Summer 2025 edition of the North Carolina State Bar Journal. In the article, the duo explain that North Carolina’s elected branches and stakeholders should work together to create a constitutionally sound mechanism for federal courts to ask the North Carolina Supreme Court for help in deciding unclear state laws. They suggest a new legal process coupling state general statutes and appellate rules to fix this critical gap, so that federal courts across the nation who need to apply North Carolina substantive law in its cases can get clear answers and make better decisions with more certainty. 

“Our state should take an opportunity to reexamine new ways of adopting a federal certification mechanism in a constitutionally sound way,” they wrote. “There is no good reason why the Supreme Court of North Carolina, in our cooperative federal system, should not have the final say on what the law of this state is, especially when a federal court confirms that it does know the answer.

Click here to read the article.