Jurisdiction Stripping: Litigation, Ideology, and Congressional Control of the Courts

This study finds that Congress removes court jurisdiction, and does so with increasing frequency over time. Institution-based models predict that Congress should strategically remove court review to control the judiciary's influence over policy when congressional and court preferences differ. Administrative realities suggest that jurisdiction removals may be aimed at controlling litigation, not judicial ideology. Denying courts’ review denies litigants court access, an action with ramifications for litigation driven costs, delays, and caseload pressures. Using a new database of all public laws containing jurisdiction stripping provisions from the 78th through the 108th Congresses, this study tests for relations between jurisdiction stripping and either federal case filings or ideological distances among the courts, Congress, and agencies. The findings indicate that administrative concerns related to litigation in which the government is a defendant influence jurisdiction stripping, but ideology does not.