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 In another controversial example, some have argued that a jurisdiction-limiting statute would exceed Congress’s powers if it were enacted for constitutionally forbidden purposes, whatever those might be. Whether such an inquiry into purpose is appropriate is a subject of debate. Ex parte McCardle contains a dictum clearly precluding the inquiry. In response to the argument that Congress had withdrawn the Court’s appellate jurisdiction for the forbidden purpose of preventing the enforcement of a constitutional right, the Court answered that “[w]e are not at liberty to inquire into the motives of the legislature.” But there is arguably language in United States v. Klein that supports the inquiry into forbidden purposes; there, the Court stated that jurisdiction-stripping legislation that is enacted “as a means to an end” that is not constitutionally valid “is not an exercise of the acknowledged power of Congress to make exceptions … to the appellate power.” In addition, Supreme Court decisions in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have made legislative motives relevant to the assessment of statutes’ constitutional validity under a broad range of other constitutional provisions, such as the First Amendment. In light of those decisions, it is arguable that motive-based analysis could now be invoked.

b. Limits from Elsewhere in the Constitution

No one doubts that rights under some provisions of the Constitution define limits on Congress’s power to restrict the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and other courts. In Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court affirmed that the Suspension Clause constitutes a rights-based limit on congressional power to curb jurisdiction over petitions for the writ of habeas corpus. Although Boumediene was decided by a narrowly divided Court, it should be uncontroversial to say that a statute stripping jurisdiction over suits brought by racial minorities or adherents of a particular religion or political party would violate constitutional guarantees against discrimination.

Henry Hart famously argued that jurisdiction-limiting legislation would violate the Due Process Clause if it removed all grants of jurisdiction and all judicial remedies through which those rights might be vindicated, because a law of that kind would effectively destroy constitutional rights. According to Hart, it would be “monstrous illogic” to construe Congress’s power to limit jurisdiction and withhold judicial remedies as a de facto power to destroy constitutional rights. But there is little case law or other authority identifying where exactly the lines between the permissible and the impermissible are drawn.

Hart did not believe—and the Supreme Court has denied—that the Constitution guarantees an effective remedy in court to every person whose constitutional rights have been