Constitutional Court

• Author: Kenneth L. Karst
• Pages: 523-524

Page 523

Article III vests the federal judicial power in the Supreme Court and in any lower courts that Congress may create. The judiciary so constituted was intended by the Framers to be an independent branch of the government. The judges of courts established under Article III were thus guaranteed life tenure "during GOOD BEHAVIOR " and protected against the reduction of their salaries while they held office. The federal courts so constituted are called "constitutional courts." They are to be distinguished from LEGISLATIVE COURTS, whose judges do not have comparable constitutional guarantees of independence.

Constitutional courts, sometimes called "Article III courts," are limited in the business they can be assigned. They may be given JURISDICTION only over CASES AND CONTROVERSIES falling within the JUDICIAL POWER OF THE UNITED STATES. For example, Congress could not constitutionally confer jurisdiction on a constitutional court to give ADVISORY OPINIONS, or to decide a case that fell outside Article III's list of cases and controversies included within the judicial power. That list divides into two categories of cases: those in which jurisdiction depends on the issues at stake (for example, FEDERAL QUESTION JURISDICTION) and

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those in which jurisdiction depends on the parties to the case (for example, DIVERSITY JURISDICTION.)

Congress can, of course, create bodies other than constitutional courts and assign them the function of deciding cases?even cases falling within the judicial power, within limits that remain unclear even after NORTHERN PIPELINE CONSTRUCTION CO. V. MARATHON PIPE LINE CO. (1982). Such a legislative court is not confined by Article III's specification of the limits of the federal judicial power, any more than an...