The courts, congress, and the politics of federal jurisdiction

activity in a more visible series of jurisdictional debates-attempts to undermine federal judicial decisions in areas of constitutional law under the veneer of jurisdictional oversight.Before proceeding to those important issues, however, it is vital to sketch the constitutional underpinnings of Congress's jurisdictional power and to present an historical overview of American jurisdictional development. FEDERAL JURISDICTION IN THE AMERICAN SYSTEMMeasured against the many legislative and executive responsibilities laid out in Articles I and II of the United States Constitution, Article III's detailing of the judicial branch appears as an example of parsimony and restraint.At just under three hundred words, Article III is a purposefully vague text designed to give Congress wide latitude in administering numerous aspects of the federal court system.Indeed, despite its moniker as the "judicial article," Article III explicitly invokes Congress's power over the judiciary no fewer than four times.Congress has, in turn, utilized this discretion to, among other things, erect a system of lower federal district (Act of September 24, 1789) and appeals (Act of March 3, 1891) courts, prescribe the size of the United States Supreme Court (Act of September 24, 1789), and even create specialized courts for the adjudication of specific types of claims (Baum 1991).