Article Three empowers the courts to handle cases or controversies arising under federal law, as well as other enumerated areas. Article Three also defines treason. Section 1 of Article Three vests the judicial power of the United States in the Supreme Court, as well as inferior courts established by Congress.

Article III, Section II of the Constitution establishes the jurisdiction (legal ability to hear a case) of the Supreme Court. The Court has original jurisdiction (a case is tried before the Court) over certain cases, e.g., suits between two or more states and/or cases involving ambassadors and other public ministers.

Article III of the Constitution establishes and empowers the judicial branch of the national government. To some people in the United States at that time, the federal government seemed almost like a foreign government.

The power to interpret the law of the United States will be held by the U.S. Supreme Court, and the lower federal courts. Thus as the case load of the Supreme Court grew, Congress was able to create the lower federal courts.

Principally authored by Senator Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, the Judiciary Act of 1789 established the structure and jurisdiction of the federal court system and created the position of attorney general.

As the final arbiter of the law, the Court is charged with ensuring the American people the promise of equal justice under law and, thereby, also functions as guardian and interpreter of the Constitution. The Supreme Court is “distinctly American in concept and function,” as Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes observed.

The number of justices on the Supreme Court is not set by the Constitution, but it is determined by Congress. And when a party controls the presidency and Congress, the chances for altering the number of justices increases. The Judiciary Act of 1789, signed into law by President George Washington on Sept.

FDR’s “Court-Packing” Plan. After winning the 1936 presidential election in a landslide, Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a bill to expand the membership of the Supreme Court. The law would have added one justice to the Court for each justice over the age of 70, with a maximum of six additional justices.

By the start of the Civil War, the number of Supreme Court justices had increased to nine in order to cover additional circuit courts in the expanding American West. The last time Congress changed the number of Supreme Court justices was in 1869, again to meet a political end.