Appellate Jurisdiction

Appellate jurisdiction is the power to review a decision already made by a lower court, rather than trying a case from scratch. The vast majority of the Supreme Court’s docket is appellate: Article III, Section 2 gives the Court appellate jurisdiction over nearly all federal cases and many state-court cases involving federal law, “with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make” — meaning Congress has real power to define and limit what the Court can hear on appeal.

That congressional control became a live issue in Ex parte McCardle (1869), when Congress, worried the Supreme Court might use a pending case to invalidate Reconstruction-era military occupation of the South, repealed the specific statute giving the Court jurisdiction over the case while it was already under review. The Court unanimously agreed it had lost jurisdiction and dismissed the case, confirming that Congress can strip appellate jurisdiction over specific matters even mid-case.

Common misconception: people often assume the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction is fixed by the Constitution and immune from congressional interference. Article III’s “Exceptions” clause gives Congress real, tested authority to carve out categories of cases from the Court’s appellate reach, even though Congress rarely exercises this power so directly today.