Who Controls the Court? Inside Congress’s Power to Curb Supreme Review

Today’s featured CRS article, “The Exceptions Clause and Congressional Control over Supreme Court Jurisdiction”, explains how Article III allocates the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction (cases involving ambassadors and suits with a state as a party) and gives it appellate jurisdiction over all other federal matters “with such Exceptions…as Congress shall make.” It surveys how Congress has long shaped the Court’s appellate docket — principally through statutes and certiorari — while courts and scholars debate the breadth of Congress’s “Exceptions Clause” power. Key cases (e.g., Marbury on fixed original jurisdiction; McCardle, Yerger, Francis Wright, Bitty upholding various limits; Klein forbidding Congress from dictating outcomes; Felker, Hamdan, Boumediene constraining limits via habeas and the Suspension Clause) illustrate that jurisdiction stripping cannot violate other constitutional guarantees or separation-of-powers principles. The report also reviews modern proposals — such as de-facto term limits that restrict which justices hear appellate cases and bills curbing review of presidential-immunity claims — and flags legal risks (due process, Good Behavior tenure, Klein problems) and practical limits (Congress can’t alter original jurisdiction; states may file original suits; lower courts would still generate divergent rulings). Overall, while Congress wields significant authority to regulate the Supreme Court’s appellate reach, that power is neither plenary nor cost-free: constitutional constraints and the need for national uniformity in federal law cabin how far jurisdiction-stripping can go. This article falls under the issue area of Government Operations and Politics. From the CRS:

Article III, Section 2, Clause 1, of the Constitution grants the federal courts jurisdiction to consider certain types of “Cases” and “Controversies,” defined based on the legal issues presented or the identity of the litigants. Article III, Section 2, Clause 2, then provides that the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction over “all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party” and that in all other cases subject to federal court jurisdiction, “the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.”

Interested readers can find the full article here.

Congressional Communities is featuring one Congressional Research Service (CRS) article per day in an effort to share with our readers the wealth of information that the CRS makes readily available.