The Supreme Court’s mandatory jurisdiction is all but gone. On June 27, President Reagan signed legislation that freed the Court from virtually all appeals—cases the justices were at least technically obliged to decide on the merits.
Nine years ago, in the September 1979 issue of the ABA Journal, Eugene Gressman, a co-author of this article, predicted that: "The appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court … appears to be at the brink of losing virtually all its … mandatory characteristics. Given the delays and quirks of the legislative process, Congress in the relatively near future seems likely to cloak the Court’s jurisdiction almost entirely in discretionary garb."
The "quirks of the legislative process" delayed the enactment of this legislation—the new law is in most respects identical with bills introduced in 1978 and 1979—for nine years.
