Court-stripping
Court-stripping is "an effort to take jurisdiction or discretion away from a court or a particular judge, often to deny a particular group access to the courts. Politicians increasingly use court-stripping to reverse decisions, punish judges, or even avoid future rulings they may not like. Sometimes they seek to eliminate jurisdiction altogether. In other instances, they shuffle lawsuits between state and federal courts to achieve political ends." [1]
"Proponents of court-stripping frequently seek to whip up populist outrage against the courts. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay says that 'judges need to be intimidated' and that Congress should 'take no prisoners' in dealing with the courts." [2]
Recent Examples
The following recent examples of "court-stripping" are cited in March 2005, by Bert Brandenberg, Executive Director, Justice at Stake, who says "Recent years have seen an explosion in Congressional efforts to undermine the role of the courts." [3]
- The Pledge Protection Act adopted by the U.S. House in 2004 would have outlawed the ability of courts to hear challenges to the Pledge of Allegiance.
- The Constitution Restoration Act of 2004 would have denied federal courts the power to hear suits involving the government’s promotion of religion by removing court jurisdiction over challenges of a governmental official’s 'acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government.'
- Recent proposals to amend the U.S. Constitution to define marriage in a narrow fashion would deny state courts the ability to interpret their own state constitutions; the Defense of Marriage Amendment of 2005 would actually write court-stripping into the Constitution.
- The Real ID Act of 2005 – a sweeping piece of immigration reform - would bar courts from reviewing the Secretary of Homeland Security’s unilateral waiver of any law that may interfere with the building of border fences, and deny many victims of overseas persecution a day in an American court to plead for asylum.
- The 2003 'Feeney Amendment' sharply limited the ability of federal judges to issue sentences below federal guidelines in many criminal cases. The U.S. Supreme Court effectively nullified this provision with its decision in January 2005 in U.S. v. Booker and U.S. v. Fanfan.
- The USA Patriot Act of 2001 reduced judicial discretion to review law enforcement efforts to detain suspects, monitor private Internet communications, obtain certain personal records and share wiretaps with intelligence agencies.
- The Class Action Reform Act of 2005 stripped state courts of their historic right to settle class action suits, and moved the suits into federal courts.
SourceWatch Resources
External Links
- "Congress Making Power Grabs from Federal Courts," American Civil Liberties Union. Links to documents and press releases.
- "A New Wave of Court-stripping?," Justice at Stake, May 29, 2003.
- Bert Brandenberg, "The Schiavo Tragedy and the Politics of 'Court-Stripping'," acsblog.org, March 23, 2005.
