The federal abstention doctrines govern the narrow circumstances under which a district court can decline to hear a case even though it has proper jurisdiction. One of those doctrines—Burford abstention—has generated a morass of confusion over when it applies and what goals it is meant to achieve. To find a way out of the morass, this Comment looks at contemporaneous developments in doctrines of federal court review—and at the procedural history of Burford itself—to pinpoint the precise problem that Burford abstention was created to solve. It argues that the Burford Court was wary of federal courts exercising jurisdiction in cases like Burford where states had organized their systems of government in ways that did not neatly parallel the federal separation of powers. When state courts have been empowered to exercise complex administrative agency–style discretion, federal courts are not a comparable substitute. Judges in the federal system, who have life tenure, may not be able to adequately step into the policymaking shoes of state court judges, who are, for better or for worse, more democratically accountable. 

This Comment proposes a straightforward test—the “Judicial Discretion Test”—that courts can use to determine whether Burford abstention is appropriate. The Test uses judicial discretion as a proxy for policymaking authority. Under the Judicial Discretion Test, if a state court judge hearing the case would have significantly more discretion under the state law at issue than a federal court judge would have when hearing a comparable case under federal law, the federal court should abstain in favor of state court. This Test is more administrable than the current framework under which courts perform ad hoc analyses, often cherry-picking particular facts from the original Burford case and looking at how closely those facts match the ones in the case at hand. As this Comment shows, it also better vindicates each of the concerns that motivated the original creation of the Burford abstention doctrine.

联邦弃权原则适用于地方法院即使具有适当管辖权也可以拒绝审理案件的狭窄情况。其中一个学说——伯福德弃权——在何时适用以及它要实现什么目标方面产生了混乱。为了找到走出困境的出路，本评论着眼于联邦法院审查原则的同期发展——以及伯福德本身的程序历史——以查明伯福德弃权案旨在解决的确切问题。它认为，伯福德法院对联邦法院在像伯福德这样的案件中行使管辖权持谨慎态度，在这些案件中，各州以与联邦权力分立不完全平行的方式组织政府系统。当州法院被授权行使复杂的行政机构式自由裁量权时，联邦法院就不是可比的替代者。终身任期的联邦系统法官可能无法充分接替州法院法官的决策权，而州法院法官无论好坏都更加民主地负责。 

本评论提出了一个简单的测试——“司法自由裁量权测试”——法院可以使用它来确定伯福德弃权是否合适。该测试使用司法自由裁量权作为决策权的代理。根据司法自由裁量权测试，如果审理案件的州法院法官根据有争议的州法律比联邦法院法官根据联邦法律审理类似案件时拥有更大的自由裁量权，则联邦法院应弃权，支持州法庭。该测试比法院执行临时分析的当前框架更易于管理，通常从最初的 Burford 案件中挑选特定的事实，并查看这些事实与手头案件中的事实的匹配程度。正如此评论所示，