Subject-matter jurisdiction, also called jurisdiction ratione materiae, is the authority of a court to hear cases of a particular type or cases relating to a specific subject matter. For instance, bankruptcy court only has the authority to hear bankruptcy cases. Subject-matter jurisdiction must be distinguished from personal jurisdiction, which is the power of a court to render a judgment against a particular defendant, and territorial jurisdiction, which is the power of the court to render a judgment concerning events that have occurred within a well-defined territory. Unlike personal or territorial jurisdiction, lack of subject-matter jurisdiction cannot be waived. A judgment from a court that did not have subject-matter jurisdiction is forever a nullity. To decide a case, a court must have a combination of subject (subjectam) and either personal (personam) or territorial (locum) jurisdiction. Subject-matter jurisdiction, personal or territorial jurisdiction, and adequate notice are the three most fundamental constitutional requirements for a valid judgment. United States State courts Many state court systems are divided into divisions such as criminal, civil law, family, and probate. A court within any one of those divisions would lack subject-matter jurisdiction to hear a case regarding matters assigned to another division. Most U.S. state court systems, however, include a superior court that has "general" jurisdiction; that is, it is competent to hear any case over which no other state court has exclusive jurisdiction. Because the United States federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction over a very small percentage of cases, such as copyright disputes, patent disputes, and United States bankruptcy court disputes, state courts have the authority to hear the vast majority of cases. U.S. federal courts Subject-matter jurisdiction is significantly more limited in United States federal courts. The maximal constitutional bounds of federal courts' subject-matter jurisdiction are defined by Article III Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution. Federal courts' actual subject-matter jurisdiction derives from Congressional enabling statutes, such as and . The United States Congress has not extended federal courts' subject-matter jurisdiction to its constitutional limits. For example, the amount-in-controversy requirement for diversity jurisdiction is based on , not a constitutional restriction. Moreover, Congress could constitutionally overrule the complete-diversity rule in diversity cases. By far the most important two categories of federal subject-matter jurisdiction in non-criminal cases are federal question jurisdiction and diversity jurisdiction. The enabling statute for federal question jurisdiction, , provides that the district courts have original jurisdiction in all civil actions arising