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Interpreting and Preserving the Constitution
important statutes ever enacted by Congress, and provides to this day
much of the basic organizational and procedural structure of the Federal
judicial system.
The power to create includes the power to destroy, and Congress has
always acted under the assumption that it therefore has the lesser power
of shaping the jurisdiction of all inferior courts as it sees fit. The Supreme
Court has generally sustained this view, and Congress may confer or
withhold both original and appellate jurisdiction in the lower Federal
courts at its discretion. As the Supreme Court explained in Cary v. Curtis
(1845), ‘‘the judicial power of the United States, although it has its origin
in the Constitution, is (except in enumerated instances applicable exclusively to this court) dependent for its distribution and organization, and
for the modes of its exercise, entirely upon the action of Congress, which
possesses sole power of creating tribunals (inferior to the Supreme Court),
for the exercise of the judicial power, and of investing them with jurisdiction either limited, concurrent, or exclusive, and of withholding jurisdiction from them in the exact degrees and character which to Congress may
seem proper for the public good.’’
Over the years, the Congress has determined the times and places for
holding court (including the Supreme Court), times of adjournment, appointment of officers, issuance of writs and methods of appeal, and other
matters relating to the administration of justice. Congress has also organized the nation into various judicial districts, or circuits as they are
called, and today there are eleve