95 courts until 1875, when lower federal courts were granted virtually all of the federal question jurisdiction set forth in Article III. (Federal question jurisdiction consists of all cases arising under the Constitution, federal laws, or treaties. But to keep many cases out of federal courts and to protect state judicial power. Congress since 1789 has set a jurisdictional amount - a dollar figure for the amount that must be in controversy before a case can be brought in federal court. That figure has varied from$500 to $10,000. Recently, however, the requirement of an amount in controversy has been eliminated for “federal question” cases but retained and increased for “diversity” cases.) By and large the Supreme Court and the American people have been satisfied with this arrangement because Congress has acted responsibly. There have been instances, however, of Congress using its power for obvious political purposes. The most blatant example occurred in 1869 during the Reconstruction Era after the Civil War. The case of Exparte McCardle (7 Wall. 506 (1869)) represents the Supreme Court’s acquiescence in the most extreme measure Congress has ever taken with regard to the Court’s jurisdiction. The case arose when a Mississippi military tribunal arrested WilliamMcCardle and held him for trial on charges of disturbing the peace, inciting insurrection, slowing the pace of Reconstruction, and printing libellous statements. McCardle, the editor of a Mississippi newspaper, had expressed critical views of Reconstruction, especially the military government imposed on the southern states. The case came to the Supreme Court on appeal, under the authority of the Habeas Corpus Act of 1867 allowing such appeals, after a lower federal court had denied McCardle’s application for a writ of habeas corpus. Because McCardle contended that the military tribunal that held him prisoner, which existed by the authority of the Reconstruction Acts, was unlawful, the Court could in this case have declared the Reconstruction Acts unconstitutional. Congress, to make sure that the Supreme Court had no chance to do this, attached a rider to an unrelated bill repealing the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction in all cases arising under the Habeas Corpus Act of 1867. As a result, in April, 1869, the Supreme Court dismissed McCardle’s plea on the ground that the Court could not inquire into the motives of the legislature but only into its power to regulate the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. As that power was expressly granted by the Constitution, the Court no longer had jurisdiction of the case. Incidentally, the jurisdiction of the federal courts again became a political issue in recent years, with opponents of the Court’s decisions on abortion, school prayer, and school busing for racial integration workingto remove those issues fromthe appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court or from the federal courts entirely. The framers of the Constitution left roomfor some political control of the judiciary by other means as well. By presidential [and senatorial] control of the appointment process, by legislative control of the number of judges who
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