The Jurisdiction Question Is Never a Small One

National Review frames this ruling as a rebuke to 'progressive activist' judges, but I would caution the reader — and the editors — not to let the partisan satisfaction of the moment obscure the structural gravity of what has just happened. The question before the Court was not which judges were wrong. It was: does Congress possess the authority to strip federal courts of jurisdiction over a class of cases, and if so, is that power without limit? That question was contested at the Philadelphia convention, and it remains the most dangerous loose thread in the constitutional fabric.

What Article III Actually Provides

Article III, Section 1 vests the judicial power of the United States in one Supreme Court and in such inferior courts as Congress may ordain and establish. The word 'may' did real work for the framers. Inferior federal courts exist at Congress's pleasure — they are creatures of statute. From this, many have argued that Congress may also define the scope of what those courts hear. Article III, Section 2 enumerates the cases to which the judicial power shall extend, but it has long been debated whether that enumeration is a ceiling or merely a maximum the legislature may fill at will. The Supreme Court's decision here, as reported, appears to affirm the latter reading — at least in immigration. I mark that limitation: I have no direct knowledge of the opinion's reasoning, only the lead National Review provides.

The Framers' Worry, Made Fresh

My concern — and I held it openly in the ratification debates — was always that a legislature emboldened to strip courts of jurisdiction could, in time, strip them of every jurisdiction that proved inconvenient to a temporary majority. The extended-republic theory I defended in Federalist No. 10 rests on the premise that no single faction will long command a stable majority across all branches. But if the legislature can, in any given session, reassign the referee to the bench, then the game changes. The structural check that an independent judiciary provides is not a courtesy the Congress extends; it is, in large part, the reason the people consented to the compact at all.

The Specific Danger in Immigration

Immigration is an area where the executive's power is at its most concentrated and where individual liberty — the liberty of persons present on American soil — is most acutely at stake. A person subject to removal, detained, or denied entry has a claim upon the law even if their claim is ultimately unsuccessful. What the law provides, only a court may take away with finality. When Congress closes that door entirely, it is not simply managing docket efficiency; it is transferring the adjudication of personal liberty from a branch designed for impartiality to one designed for policy. I do not say Congress has no legitimate role in calibrating immigration jurisdiction — it plainly does. I say the line between calibration and abolition is the constitutional question, and it is never settled by calling the judges whose rulings you dislike 'activists.'

The Structural Verdict

If this ruling means that a clear, properly enacted statutory limit on jurisdiction binds all courts equally, then it affirms the rule of law over judicial willfulness — and that is well. If it means that Congress may, through ordinary legislation, permanently wall off a category of liberty claims from any federal review, then we have weakened the balance the convention labored to construct. I cannot, from the information provided, tell you which of those two things has occurred. That distinction is precisely what a careful reading of the full opinion — which I do not have — would resolve. I urge every reader to seek that opinion, not the headline's satisfaction, and to ask: has the Court drawn a line that Congress may not cross, or has it simply confirmed that this Congress, at this moment, has crossed it without consequence?