Taking Exception to Traditional Exceptions Clause Jurisprudence: On Congress's Power to Limit the Court's Jurisdiction

The Court's appellate jurisdiction is essential in the tri-partite structure of our constitutional system. This means that the Court's appellate jurisdiction cannot be restricted to merely its "essential roles," unless those are understood to be sufficiently encompassing to include much more than most commentators seem to think. Further, those "small" exceptions to the Court's jurisdiction, e.g., abortion or school prayer cases, must be considered at the appropriate level of abstraction; otherwise, most individual rights under the Constitution might be excluded from the Court's appellate jurisdiction in a piecemeal fashion. While the Exceptions Clause likely allows some categories of cases to be ultimately decided by Article Im courts other than the Supreme Court and other categories of cases to be removed from the federal courts entirely, the most plausible interpretation of the Exceptions Clause in light of the framer's intent, the developing jurisprudence, and the structure and spirit of the Constitution is one in which Congress has a much more limited power than most commentators seem to think.