Extract to table

The relevant provisions are as follows: Section 1 provides, in pertinent part: "The supreme judicial court, the superior court, the land court, and the probate courts, within their respective jurisdictions, may on appropriate proceedings make binding declarations of right, duty, status and other legal relations sought thereby, either before or after a breach or violation thereof, and such proceedings shall not be open to objection on the ground that a merely declaratory judgment or decree is sought thereby and such declaration, when made, shall have the force of a final judgment or decree and be reviewable as such

Section 1 further provides that declarations made under the statute "shall have the force of a final judgment or decree

Jurisdiction must exist independently, either through the general jurisdictional provisions applicable to the tribunal in question or through the parties' consent

" The Supreme Judicial Court has consistently held that the statute does not authorize courts to render advisory opinions or to decide hypothetical questions; there must be a real and substantial dispute between parties with genuinely adverse legal interests

In Bunker Hill Distribution, the Supreme Judicial Court set forth the governing standard: the controversy must involve "definite and concrete" issues between "parties having adverse legal interests

The Court further explained that the dispute must be "of sufficient immediacy and reality to warrant the issuance of a declaratory judgment