The Catholic Lawyer Volume 27 Number 4 Volume 27, Autumn 1982, Number 4 Article 2 Constitutional Crisis Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/tcl Part of the Constitutional Law Commons This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at St. John's Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Catholic Lawyer by an authorized editor of St. John's Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS SEN. DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN* Soon after the 97th Congress convened, the American Bar Associ- ation (ABA) appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The ABA representative testified that proposed legislation that would strip the fed- eral courts, including the Supreme Court, of jurisdiction over various sub- ject matter was both politically unwise and of questionable constitutional validity.' More emphatically, David Brink, the president of the ABA, stated: [W]e are confronted at this very moment with a legislative threat to our nation that may lead to the most serious constitutional crisis since our great 2 Civil War. * This Article is adapted from an address delivered to the graduating class of the St. John's University School of Law, in New York, on June 6, 1982. Constitutional Restraints Upon the Judiciary: Hearings Before the Subcomm. on the Constitution of the Senate Comm. on the Judiciary, 97th Cong., 1st Sess. 136 (1981) (state- ment of Edward I. Cutler, Chairman, Special Committee on the Coordination of Federal Judicial Improvements, American Bar Association) [hereinafter cited as Hearings].