Instead of wailing and bemoaning the imperial edicts issued this past week by the Supreme Court on Obamacare, housing discrimination, and gay marriage, the Republican-controlled Congress would do better to exercise its constitutional authority and fight back. Here is one way.
Few powers given to the Congress are more clearly defined, and yet more rarely exercised, than its power to strip the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, of jurisdiction over almost any subject matter Congress chooses. It is a mystery why the Republican leadership is so timid and weak in submitting to the clearly unconstitutional decisions handed down on a regular basis by the high court.
Article III, section 2 of the U.S. Constitution expressly states (emphasis added):
In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, 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.
This means exactly what it says: the Supreme Court (and by implication, the lesser federal courts) can be stripped from hearing and deciding any issue at all, save only those few issues granted to its original jurisdiction in the language above. Cases in which “a state shall be party” is strictly limited to those controversies between two or more states, or between a state and citizens of another state, or between a state and foreigners (Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. 264 [1821]).
No comments:
Post a Comment