This is a long, complex post by Professor Michael Dorf (Cornell) about the nature and extent of federal court jurisdiction. He treads comfortably in ground I have not. But the core idea is that the Constitution created no federal courts except the Supreme which had limited original jurisdiction. So the main thrust was that state court decisions which contravened federal law could be appealed to the Circuit Justice (once Circuits were created), then to the Supreme Court.
The judiciary act of 1789 created the District Courts but it was not until 1875 that they were empowered to remove all federal question cases and decide all questions "arising under the Constitution and laws of the United States". Things further changed post civil war with the 1891 creation of Circuit Courts of Appeals.
The present challenge is that in Whole Women's Health the Supreme Court declared itself befuddled by how to deal with the situation created by SB 8's bar on enforcement by state officials of its post six weeks gestation ban on elective abortion.
Dorf's solution (below) seems well founded to me. - GWC
Dorf on Law: SB8 and the Madisonian CompromiseBy Michael Dorf
***Yet while the Story/Amar view may be too extravagant, there is a narrower view, which focuses on the Supreme Court and is originally attributable to Henry Hart. This narrower view of Hart, which has been refined by others, including especially University of Texas Law Professor (and former Dean) Lawrence Sager, holds that the Court must have sufficient jurisdiction (notwithstanding Congress's power to make "exceptions" to its appellate jurisdiction) to maintain the supremacy and uniformity of federal law. As I explained in an article a few years ago, this more modest set of limits on congressional power better jibes with the history and core purposes of the federal judiciary than the Story/Amar view. The very core, I argued there, is federal judicial review of state denials of claims of federal constitutional right.
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