The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation Part 105

Although Congress can neither enlarge nor restrict the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, it may vest concurrent jurisdiction in the lower federal courts in cases over which the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction.[586] Thus among the grounds given for the decision in Wisconsin _v._ Pelican Insurance Co.,[587] that the Court had no original jurisdiction of an action by a State to enforce a judgment for a pecuniary penalty awarded by one of its own courts, was the provision of the 13th section of the Judiciary Act of 1789[588] that "the Supreme Court shall have exclusive jurisdiction of controversies of a civil nature, where a State is a party, except between a State and its citizens; and except also between a State and citizens of other States, or aliens, in which latter case it shall have original but not exclusive jurisdiction." Speaking of that act with particular reference to this section, Justice Gray declared that it "was pa.s.sed by the first Congress a.s.sembled under the Const.i.tution, many of whose members had taken part in framing that instrument, and is contemporaneous and weighty evidence of its true meaning."[589] In cases affecting consuls, moreover, the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court is shared concurrently with State courts unless Congress by positive action makes such jurisdiction exclusive.[590]

The Appellate Jurisdiction of the Supreme Court

SUBJECT TO LIMITATION BY CONGRESS

Unlike its original jurisdiction, the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court is subject to control by Congress in the exercise of the broadest discretion. Although the provisions of article III seem, superficially at least, to imply that its appellate jurisdiction would flow directly from the Const.i.tution until Congress should by positive enactment make exceptions to it, rulings of the Court since 1796 establish the contrary rule. Consequently, before the Supreme Court can exercise appellate jurisdiction, an act of Congress must have bestowed it, and affirmative bestowals of jurisdiction are interpreted as exclusive in nature so as to const.i.tute an exception to all other cases.

This rule was first applied in Wiscart _v._ Dauchy[591] where the Court held that in the absence of a statute prescribing a rule for appellate proceedings, the Court lacked jurisdiction. It was further stated that if a rule were prescribed, the Court could not depart from it. Fourteen years later Chief Justice Marshall observed for the Court that its appellate jurisdiction is derived from the Const.i.tution, but proceeded nevertheless to hold that an affirmative bestowal of appellate jurisdiction by Congress, which made no express exceptions to it, implied a denial of all others.[592]

The McCardle Case

The power of Congress to make exceptions to the court's appellate jurisdiction has thus become, in effect, a plenary power to bestow, withhold, and withdraw appellate jurisdiction, even to the point of its abolition. And this power extends to the withdrawal of appellate jurisdiction even in pending cases. In the notable case of Ex parte McCardle,[593] a Mississippi newspaper editor who was being held in custody by the military authorities acting under the authority of the Reconstruction Acts filed a pet.i.tion for a writ of _habeas corpus_ in the circuit court for Southern Mississippi. He alleged unlawful restraint and challenged the validity to the Reconstruction statutes.

The writ was issued, but after a hearing the prisoner was remanded to the custody of the military authorities. McCardle then appealed to the Supreme Court which denied a motion to dismiss the appeal, heard arguments on the merits of the case, and took it under advis.e.m.e.nt.

Before a conference could be held, Congress, fearful of a test of the Reconstruction Acts, enacted a statute withdrawing appellate jurisdiction from the Court in certain _habeas corpus_ proceedings.[594]

The Court then proceeded to dismiss the appeal for want of jurisdiction. Chief Justice Chase, speaking for the Court said: "Without jurisdiction the Court cannot proceed at all in any cause.

Jurisdiction is the power to declare the law and when it ceases to exist, the only function remaining to the Court is that of announcing the fact and dismissing the cause."[595]

Although the McCardle Case goes to the ultimate in sustaining Congressional power over the court's appellate jurisdiction and although it was born of the stresses and tensions of the Reconstruction period, it has been frequently reaffirmed and approved.[596] The result is to vest an unrestrained discretion in Congress to curtail and even abolish the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, and to prescribe the manner and forms in which it may be exercised. This principle is well expressed in The "Francis Wright"[597] where the Court sustained the validity of an act of Congress which limited the court's review in admiralty cases to questions of law appearing on the record. A portion of the opinion is worthy of quotation: "Authority to limit the jurisdiction necessarily carries with it authority to limit the use of the jurisdiction. Not only may whole cla.s.ses of cases be kept out of the jurisdiction altogether, but particular cla.s.ses of questions may be subjected to reexamination and review, while others are not. To our minds it is no more unconst.i.tutional to provide that issues of fact shall not be retried in any case, than that neither issues of law nor fact shall be retried in cases where the value of the matter in dispute is less than $5,000. The general power to regulate implies the power to regulate in all things. The whole of a civil appeal may be given, or a part. The const.i.tutional requirements are all satisfied if one opportunity is had for the trial of all parts of a case. Everything beyond that is a matter of legislative discretion."[598]

The Power of Congress To Regulate the Jurisdiction of the Lower Federal Courts

MARTIN _v._ HUNTER'S LESSEE

The power of Congress to vest, withdraw, and regulate the jurisdiction of the lower federal courts is derived from the power to create tribunals under article I, the necessary and proper clause, and the clause in article III, vesting the judicial power in the Supreme Court and such inferior courts as "the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." Balancing these provisions, however, are the phrases in article III to the effect that the judicial power "shall be vested" in courts and "shall extend" to nine cla.s.ses of cases and controversies and the question of what is the force of the word "shall." In Martin _v._ Hunter's Lessee,[599] Justice Story declared obiter that it was imperative upon Congress to create inferior federal courts and vest in them all the jurisdiction they were capable of receiving. This dictum was criticized by Justice Johnson in his dissent, in which he contended that the word "shall" was used "in the future sense," and had "nothing imperative in it."[600] And for that matter in another portion of his opinion Justice Story expressly recognized that Congress may create inferior courts and "parcel out such jurisdiction among such courts, from time to time at their own pleasure";[601] and in his Commentaries he took a broad view of the power of Congress to regulate jurisdiction.[602]

PLENARY POWER OF CONGRESS OVER JURISDICTION

Neither legislative construction nor judicial interpretation has sustained Justice Story's position in Martin _v._ Hunter's Lessee. The Judiciary Act of 1789, which was a contemporaneous interpretation of the Const.i.tution by the Congress, rests on the a.s.sumption of a broad discretion on the part of Congress to create courts and to grant jurisdiction to and withhold it from them. This act conferred original jurisdiction upon the district and circuit courts in certain cases, but by no means all they were capable of receiving. Thus suits at the common law to which the United States was a party were limited by the amount in controversy. Except for offenses against the United States, seizures and forfeitures made under the impost, navigation, or trade laws of the United States, and suits by aliens under International Law or treaties, that whole group of cases involving the Const.i.tution, laws, and treaties of the United States was withheld from the jurisdiction of the district and circuit courts,[603] with the result that original jurisdiction in these cases was exercised by the State courts subject to appeal to the Supreme Court under section 25. Jurisdiction was vested in the district courts over admiralty and maritime matters and in the circuit courts over suits between citizens of different States where the amount exceeded $500, or suits to which an alien was a party.[604] The act of 1789 empowered the courts to issue writs, to require parties to produce testimony, to punish contempts, to make rules, and to grant stays of execution.[605] Finally, equity jurisdiction was limited to those cases where a "plain, adequate, and complete remedy" could not be had at law.[606]

This care for detail in conferring jurisdiction upon the inferior courts and vesting them with ancillary powers in order to render such jurisdiction effective is of the utmost significance in the later development of the law pertaining to Congressional regulation of jurisdiction, inasmuch as it demonstrates conclusively that a majority of the members of the first Congress regarded positive action on the part of Congress to be necessary before jurisdiction and judicial powers could be exercised by courts of its own creation. Ten years later this practical construction of article III was accepted by the Supreme Court in Turner _v._ Bank of North America.[607] The case involved an attempt to recover on a promissory note in a diversity case contrary to -- 11 of the act of 1789 which forbade diversity suits involving a.s.signments unless the suit was brought before the a.s.signment was made. Counsel for the bank argued that the circuit courts were not inferior courts and that the grant of judicial power by the Const.i.tution was a direct grant of jurisdiction. This argument evoked questions from Chief Justice Ellsworth and the following statement from Justice Chase: "The notion has been frequently entertained, that the federal courts derive their power immediately from the Const.i.tution; but the political truth is, that the judicial power (except in a few specified instances) belongs to Congress. If Congress has given the power to this Court, we possess it, not otherwise; and if Congress has not given the power to us, or to any other court, it still remains at the legislative disposal. Besides, Congress is not bound, and it would, perhaps, be inexpedient, to enlarge the jurisdiction of the federal courts, to every subject, in every form, which the Const.i.tution might warrant."[608] The Court applied -- 11 of the Judiciary Act and ruled that the circuit court lacked jurisdiction.

Eight years later Chief Justice Marshall in distinguis.h.i.+ng between common law and statutory courts declared that "courts which are created by written law, and whose jurisdiction is defined by written law, cannot transcend that jurisdiction."[609] This rule was reaffirmed in the famous case of United States _v._ Hudson and Goodwin[610] on the a.s.sumption that the power of Congress to create inferior courts necessarily implies "the power to limit the jurisdiction of those Courts to particular objects."[611] After pointing to the original jurisdiction which flows immediately from the Const.i.tution, Justice Johnson a.s.serted: "All other Courts created by the general Government possess no jurisdiction but what is given them by the power that creates them, and can be vested with none but what the power ceded to the general Government will authorize them to confer."[612] To the same affect is Rhode Island _v._ Ma.s.sachusetts[613] where Justice Baldwin declared that "the distribution and appropriate exercise of the judicial power must therefore be made by laws pa.s.sed by Congress and cannot be a.s.sumed by any other department * * *"

A more sweeping a.s.sertion of Congressional power over jurisdiction was made by the Supreme Court in Cary _v._ Curtis,[614] which bears more directly upon the issue than some of the earlier cases. Here counsel had argued that a statute which made final the decisions of the Secretary of the Treasury in tax disputes was unconst.i.tutional in that it deprived the federal courts of the judicial power vested in them by the Const.i.tution. In reply to this argument the Court speaking through Justice Daniel declared: "The judicial power of the United States * * *

is (except in enumerated instances, applicable exclusively to this court) dependent for its distribution and organization, and for the modes of its exercise, entirely upon the action of Congress, who possess the sole power of creating the tribunals (inferior to the Supreme Court) * * * and of investing them with jurisdiction, either limited, concurrent, or exclusive, and of withholding jurisdiction from them in the exact degrees and character which to Congress may seem proper for the public good." Continuing, Justice Daniel said: "It follows then that courts created by statute, must look to the statute as the warrant for their authority; certainly they cannot go beyond the statute, and a.s.sert an authority with which they may not be invested by it, or which may clearly be denied to them."[615]

The principles of Cary _v._ Curtis were reiterated five years later in Sheldon _v._ Sill[616] where the validity of -- 11 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 was directly questioned. The a.s.signee of a negotiable instrument filed a suit in a circuit court even though no diversity of citizens.h.i.+p existed as between the original parties to the mortgage. The circuit court entertained jurisdiction in spite of the prohibition against such suits in -- 11 and ordered a sale of the property in question. On appeal to the Supreme Court, counsel for the a.s.signee contended that -- 11 was void because the right of a citizen of any State to sue citizens of another in the federal courts flowed directly from article III and Congress could not restrict that right. The Supreme Court unanimously rejected these contentions and held that since the Const.i.tution had not established the inferior courts or distributed to them their respective powers, and since Congress had the authority to establish such courts, it could define their jurisdiction and withhold from any court of its own creation jurisdiction of any of the enumerated cases and controversies in article III.[617] Sheldon _v._ Sill has been cited, quoted, and reaffirmed many times.[618] Its effect and that of the cases following it is that as regards the jurisdiction of the lower federal courts two elements are necessary to confer jurisdiction: first, the Const.i.tution must have given the courts the capacity to receive it, and second, an act of Congress must have conferred it. The manner in which the inferior federal courts acquire jurisdiction, its character, the mode of its exercise, and the objects of its operation are remitted without check or limitation to the wisdom of the legislature.[619]

JUDICIAL POWER UNDER THE EMERGENCY PRICE CONTROL ACT

The plenary power of Congress to withhold and restrict jurisdiction was given renewed vitality by the Emergency Price Control Act of 1942[620]

and the cases arising therefrom. Fearful that the price control program might be effectively nullified by injunctions, Congress provided for a special court and special procedures for contesting the validity of price regulations. In Lockerty _v._ Phillips[621] the Supreme Court sustained the power of Congress to confine equity jurisdiction, to restrain enforcement of the act to the specially created Emergency Court of Appeals, with appeal to the Supreme Court. The Court went much farther than this in Yakus _v._ United States,[622] and held that the provision of the act conferring on the Emergency Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court exclusive jurisdiction to determine the validity of any regulation or order, and providing that no court should have jurisdiction or power to consider the validity of any regulation, precluded the plea of invalidity of such a regulation as a defense to its violation in a criminal proceeding in a district court. Although Justice Rutledge protested in his dissent that this provision of the act conferred jurisdiction on the district courts from which essential elements of the judicial power had been abstracted,[623] Chief Justice Stone declared for the majority that the provision presented no novel const.i.tutional issue.

LEGISLATIVE CONTROL OVER WRITS

The authority of Congress to regulate the jurisdiction of the lower federal courts includes that of controlling the power of the courts to issue writs in cases where they have jurisdiction and to regulate other ancillary powers generally.[624] Among some of the more notable restrictions in this regard are the limitations on the power of courts to issue injunctions, particularly in the field of taxation and labor disputes. By the act of March 2, 1867,[625] Congress provided that "no suit for the purpose of restraining the a.s.sessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court." There have never been any const.i.tutional doubts concerning this provision, which was strictly applied for many years[626] until 1916 when the Supreme Court began to make exceptions[627] which in the later cases[628] made the provision so inefficacious that by October, 1935, more than 1600 suits had been filed to restrain the collection of processing taxes under the Agricultural Adjustment Act.[629] None of these cases, however, raises any issue other than that of statutory interpretation, and since 1936 the Court has interpreted the exceptions to the statute somewhat more strictly.[630]

Injunctions in Labor Disputes; the Norris-LaGuardia Act

The Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932[631] is significant for its restrictions on the powers of the federal courts to issue injunctions in labor disputes in the form of requirements for hearings followed by findings that unlawful acts are threatened and will be committed unless restrained, or if already committed will be continued; that substantial injury to the property of complainants will ensue; that as to the relief granted greater injury will be inflicted upon complainants by denying relief than will be inflicted on defendants by granting it; that the complainants have no adequate remedy at law; and, finally, that the public officials charged with the protection of complainants' property are either unable or unwilling to do so. This act has been scrupulously applied by the Supreme Court, which has implicitly sustained its const.i.tutionality by construing its restrictions liberally[632] in every case except United States _v._ United Mine Workers,[633] where it was held that the statute did not apply to suits brought by the United States to enjoin a strike in the coal industry while the Government technically was operating the mines.

JUDICIAL POWER EQUATED WITH DUE PROCESS OF LAW

Although the cases point to a plenary power in Congress to withhold jurisdiction from the inferior courts and to withdraw it at any time after it has been conferred, even as applied to pending cases, there are a few cases in addition to Martin _v._ Hunter's Lessee[634] which slightly qualify the c.u.mulative effect of this impressive array of precedents. As early as 1856, the Supreme Court in Murray _v._ Hoboken Land and Improvement Co.[635] distinguished between matters of private right which from their nature were the subject of a suit at the common law, equity, or admiralty and cannot be withdrawn from judicial cognizance and those matters of public right which, though susceptible of judicial determination, did not require it and which might or might not be brought within judicial cognizance. Seventy-seven years later the Court elaborated this distinction in Crowell _v._ Benson,[636] which involved the finality to be accorded administrative findings of jurisdictional facts in compensation cases. In holding that an employer was ent.i.tled to a trial _de novo_ of the const.i.tutional jurisdictional facts of the matter of the employer-employee relations.h.i.+p and of the occurrence of the injury in interstate commerce, Chief Justice Hughes, speaking for the majority fused the due process clause of Amendment V and article III, but emphasized that the issue ultimately was "rather a question of the appropriate maintenance of the Federal judicial power,"

and "whether the Congress may subst.i.tute for const.i.tutional courts, in which the judicial power of the United States is vested, an administrative agency * * * for the final determination of the existence of the facts upon which the enforcement of the const.i.tutional rights of the citizen depend." To do so, contended the Chief Justice, "would be to sap the judicial power as it exists under the Federal Const.i.tution and to establish a government of a bureaucratic character alien to our system, wherever const.i.tutional rights depend, as not infrequently they do depend, upon the facts, and finality as to facts becomes in effect finality in law."[637]

JUDICIAL _VERSUS_ NONJUDICIAL FUNCTIONS

The power of Congress to confer jurisdiction on the lower federal courts is qualified by the rule that before Congress can vest jurisdiction in the inferior courts, they must have the capacity to receive it. The capacity of the lower judiciary to receive jurisdiction is defined in the enumeration of cases and controversies in article III. Consequently in vesting courts with jurisdiction, Congress cannot go beyond this enumeration.[638] It follows from the rule that const.i.tutional courts can perform only judicial functions that Congress, in vesting courts with jurisdiction, cannot impose upon them nonjudicial duties such as administering pensions,[639] deciding issues subject to later executive or legislative action,[640] rendering advisory opinions, or opinions which are not final and conclusive upon the parties,[641] or taking jurisdiction of matters from which any essential element of the judicial power has been abstracted.[642] To be sure, Congress may clothe some matters of an administrative nature with the mantle of a case or controversy and thereby make it a matter of judicial cognizance, as it has done with naturalization proceedings,[643] the administration of certain laws relating to the expulsion of aliens,[644] the limited administration of funds received from the Government of Mexico to compensate American citizens for claims against that government,[645]

and, of course, the traditional administration of bankrupt enterprises through the medium of a receiver.

Federal-State Court Relations

PROBLEMS RAISED BY CONCURRENCY

The American Federal System with its dual system of courts, exercising concurrent jurisdiction in a number of cla.s.ses of cases, presents numerous possibilities of inter-court conflicts and interference.

Subject to Congressional enactments to the contrary, the State courts have concurrent jurisdiction over all the cla.s.ses of cases and controversies enumerated in article III except suits between States, those to which the United States is a party, those to which a foreign state is a party, and cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction. Even in admiralty cases the State courts, though unable to exercise any portion of admiralty or maritime jurisdiction by delegation or otherwise,[646] may have a concurrent jurisdiction when the same issues a.s.sume the form of a case at common law.[647] In addition to conflicts arising out of concurrent jurisdiction, relations between federal and State courts are exposed to other frictions, such as injunctions in one jurisdiction restraining judicial processes in another, the use of the writ of _habeas corpus_ by a court of concurrent jurisdiction to release persons in custody of another, and the refusal by State courts to comply with orders of the Supreme Court. The relations between federal and State courts are governed in part by Const.i.tutional Law with respect to State court interference with the federal courts and State court refusal to comply with the judgments of federal tribunals, by statutes as regards interference by federal courts with those of the States, and by self-imposed rules of comity applied for the avoidance of unseemly conflicts.

DISOBEDIENCE OF SUPREME COURT ORDERS BY STATE COURTS

The refusal of State courts to make returns on writs of errors issued by the Supreme Court has already been noted in connection with the disobedience of the Virginia courts in Martin _v._ Hunter's Lessee[648]

and Cohens _v._ Virginia[649] and in that of the Wisconsin court in Ableman _v._ Booth.[650] More spectacular disobedience to federal authority arose out of the Cherokee Indian case involving actions of Georgia and its courts. In the first of these the Supreme Court had issued a writ of error to the Georgia Supreme Court to review the conviction of Corn Ta.s.sel for the murder of another Cherokee Indian. The writ was served, but before a hearing could be held Corn Ta.s.sel was executed on the day originally set for punishment contrary to the federal law that a writ of error superseded sentence until the appeal was decided. This action ensued as a result of the legislature's approval of the governor's policy that he would permit no interference with Georgia's courts by orders of the Supreme Court and would resist by force any attempt to enforce them with all the forces at his command.[651]

Worcester _v._ Georgia

Two years later Georgia renewed its defiance of the Supreme Court in Worcester _v._ Georgia[652] which involved the conviction of two missionaries for residing among the Indians without a license. The Supreme Court reversed the conviction on the ground that the State had no jurisdiction over the Cherokee reservations and ordered Worcester's discharge in a special mandate to the superior court of Gwinnett County.

The State court ignored the mandate and once again the governor of the State announced that he would meet such usurpation by the Supreme Court with determined resistance. Consequently, Worcester and Butler remained in jail until they agreed to abandon further efforts for their discharge by federal authority in the form of a writ of error, whereupon the governor pardoned them on the condition that they leave the State.

CONFLICTS OF JURISDICTION: COMITY

Aside from these more dramatic a.s.sertions of independence of federal courts, State court interference with the federal judiciary has occurred for the most part in conflicts of jurisdiction which affect only the lower federal courts as courts of concurrent jurisdiction and in attempts to release persons in federal custody. To the extent that this phase of federal-state relations is not governed by statute or the supremacy clause of article VI, it is governed by comity, a self-imposed rule of judicial morality whereby independent tribunals of concurrent or coordinate jurisdiction exercise a mutual restraint in order to prevent interference with each other and to avoid collisions of authority.

Although the Court on one occasion has stated that the principle of comity is not a rule of law but "one of practice, convenience, and expediency"[653] which persuades, but does not command, it has also declared that in the American Federal System it has come to have "a higher sanction than the utility which comes from concord" and has been converted into a principle "of right and of law, and therefore of necessity."[654] As developed and applied by the Supreme Court the rule of comity is exemplified in three cla.s.ses of cases: First, those in which a court has acquired jurisdiction of the _res_ or the possession of property and another court interferes with that jurisdiction or possession; second, those in which a court has acquired jurisdiction or custody of the person and another interferes with such jurisdiction or custody, most frequently by discharges from custody in _habeas corpus_ proceedings; and, third, those in which injunctions are used to stay proceedings in another court or to enjoin official action before the courts of proper jurisdiction have had an opportunity to adjudicate the issue.