Fed Courts

Personal InjuryFairly traceable to D's conductLikely to be redressed

Concrete & personalized

• Logical link between status & type of legislative enactment attacked
• Nexus between status & precise nature of constitutional infringement

• Injury fairly traceable to challenged action
• Not independent actions of 3rd party not before the court

• Injury likely to be redressed by a favorable decisions
• Depends on the type of remedy sought

Requires some relationshp between litigant and those whose rights they want to assert & some sort of impediment to 3rd parties effective assertion of their own rights through litigation

Statutes are presumed to be severable unless Congress intended the statute not to be severable

Controversy between the parties must be definite and concrete or touch legal relations between parties having adverse legal interests

• Voluntary cessation of allegedly illegal conduct
• Capable of repetition, yet evading review

Direct threat of punishment against a named party for a completed act

• Fitness of issues for judicial decision
• Purely legal issue?
• Hardship to parties from withholding immediate reviw
• Direct effect on day-to-day operations

Past illegal conduct does not cure a lack of imminent threat of future illegal conduct

• Textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of issue to a political branch (Nixon)
• Lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards (Nixon)
• Impossibility of deciding w/o initial policy decision of a nonjudicial nature
• Lack of respect to coordinate branches
• Unusual need for unquestioning adherence to political decision already made
• Potential embarrassment from too may pronouncements by different branches

Under the Madisonian Compromise, Congress has the power to limit inferior court jurisdiction

Under the Exceptions clause, Congress has the power to limit the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court

• Congress may not require courts to receive evidence establishing a legal right then dismiss the suits if a particular piece of evidence is present
• Congress may not tell a court how to decide a case

• 5th amendment is an external constraint on jurisdiction stripping
• Does not apply as long as no property right vests before the withdrawl of jurisdiction

Without clear congressional language, the SC will not assume Congress intended to bar review in all courts

• Congress may require a criminal D to challenge the validity of a statute in a different forum than the one in which he is being tried
• Due process is not violated as long as the D may raise all defenses in some form at least in wartime

D must have a meaningful opportunity for judicial review of a prior administrative determination

• Congress may assign factfinding to admin agencies
• Congress may not assign jurisdictional fact or issues of law solely to admin agencies

Congress may require exhaustion of admin remedies before any judicial review in a criminal case

Private rights cases may not be adjudicated by a legislative court

• Congress may delegate authority to non-art. III courts as long as it does not impermissibly intrude upon the judiciary
• Factors:
• particularized area of law
• Less deferential standard of appellate review
• Not self executing

At least where there is a complex regulatory scheme, private rights cases may be adjudicated in an non art. III forum

• 1) territorial court, military court, public rights case?
• 2) Waiver, integrated regulatory scheme, less deferential scope of judicial review?
• 3) Public rights or complex regulatory scheme, no jury trial required

Military tribunal lacks jurisdiction to try a US citien in loyal states, where courts are open, and offense is not connected w/military service

Military tribunal may try a US citizen who is an unlawful combatant charged w/violating the laws of war when authorized both by the President & Congress

US citizen may be detained as an enemy combatant by a military tribunal

Alien may not be tried by a military tribunal when the procedures are inconsistent with a Congressional statute

• State courts presumptively competent to adjudicate federal claims
• Unless
• explicit statutory directive
• unmistakable implication from legislative history
• clear incompatibility bet. state court jurisdiction & fed interests

A federal defendant may remove to fed court if he has a federal defense

• State habeas corpus may not reach those detained by fed govt
• State have jurisdiction in damages actions against the fed govt, but not mandamus actions against the fed govt (McClung)

• A state court must hear a fed clai if it would hear a similar state court action unlessthere is a valid excuse
• usually forum non conveniens

• Appellate power extends to federal claims in state courts because
• The court has appellate jurisdiction over cases, not courts
• State courts entertain fed claims
• Appellate power must extend to all federal claims.

• Generally SC may not review state court decisions on state law unless the state law is antecedent to the federal right
• A state law is antecedent to a fed right if the litigant must prevail on state law grounds in order to prevail on a claim of fed right

If judgment rests on both state and federal ground, SC has no jurisdiction if the state groun is independent from the fed ground and adequate to support the judgement

• Presumption of SC jurisdiction
• When the state court decision fairly appears to rest primarily on fed law; OR
• appears to be interwoven w/ fed law; OR
• when adequacy & independence of state ground not clear from the face of the opinion

Under the K clause, when a state law ground is antecedent to a fed right, SC not bound by the state court determination of state law, but gives great weight to state court determination

When a state law ground is antecedent to a fed right, court must inquire whether decision of state court rests on fair & substantial basis

• SC will not decide a fed constitutional issue unless it is raised and decised in the state court below
• Exception:violation of due process that the state court should know about (Vachon) or a conflict of interest brought to attention of state court (Wood)

• Ordinarliy SC review precluded when a state court refuses to decide a fed question because of a state procedural default
• Exceptions
• Due process violations
• Unforeseeable Appellate Court Rulings
• Lack of reasonable opportunity to have issue heard and determined by state court
• State procedural ground not fairly supported by state law
• Unduely Burdensome state procedural ground

• Eisentrager constiutional facts
• Enemy alien
• never resided in US
• captured outside the US
• tried by military commission
• offenses against law of war
• imprisoned outside US

• Factors
• citizenship and status of detainnee
• adequacy of status process
• nature of sites of apprehension and detention
• practical obstacles inherent in resolving entitlement to writ

• Detainees must receive notice of factual basis and a fair opportunity to rebut before neutral decisionmaker
• Private interest v. govt interest
• Burden in providing extra process
• Risk of erroneous detention
• possible value of additional safeguards

• Adequate substitute to habeas
• meaningful opportunity to demonstrate unlawful detention
• power to order conditional release
• scope of habeas depends on rigour of previous proceedings
• executive nature of detention
• intended durationreason for detention

• Collateral review originates from Congress
• Prima facie case w/Fed question
• Exhaustion of state remedies
• may review state factual determinations especially if vital flaw in the process
• De novo review of mixed questions of law

• procedural default will bar habeas review absent cause and prejudice
• cause= reliance on novel constitutional claims, IAC, external impediment by govt
• Prejudice= reasonable probability of a different result or an actual and substantial disadvantage