Article III and Federal Jurisdiction
Learn about how Article III structures the federal judiciary, provides for its independence, apportions original and appellate jurisdiction as between the lower federal courts and the Supreme Court, and identifies the types of cases or controversies that Congress may empower the federal courts to hear, including the Eleventh Amendment and the limits imposed by state sovereign immunity.
Transcript
I. Article III
Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution recognizes nine types of cases or controversies that Congress may empower a federal court to hear, commonly referred to as the “nine heads” of federal jurisdiction. The most familiar are cases arising under the Constitution, laws, and treaties of the United States, a subset of which are the federal question cases taught in Civil Procedure classes, and controversies between citizens of different states, a subset of which are the...