The Supreme Corporate State

The usual rascals on the Supreme Court agreed to turn the United States into a corporate state for sale to the highest bidder today. While there was considerable wailing and knashing of teeth, even from an occasional Republican, everyone pretty much agreed that there was nothing Congress could do. Actually that's not true. Consider Section 2 of Article 3 of the Constitution:

(The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority; to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls; to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction; to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party; to Controversies between two or more States; between a State and Citizens of another State; between Citizens of different States; between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.) (This section in parentheses is modified by the 11th Amendment.)

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

I have emboldened the crucial phrases. Congress has the unconditional right to decide what matters, if any, should be outside the Judicial appellate purview. It would be hard to doubt that the SC's interference in electoral matters might be an appropriate exception. This is the nuclear weapon of Congress in its long contest with the Court, and the Congress has been extremely reluctant to wield it. But this might be the time. Congress could write a very narrow law to the effect that the SC jurisdiction in the case of regulation of elections be limited to the interpretation of the law, and that Congress reserves to itself the right to decide questions of constitutionality of such laws.

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