2024 Term of Court:
Article III of the federal Constitution sets out the limited jurisdiction of the federal courts created thereunder, beginning (but not ending) with the following words:
The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority.
U.S. Const., Article III, Section 2.
Over several decades, the United States Supreme Court has drawn three essential elements to that formulation. In the Court’s historical view, to obtain federal court jurisdiction over his or case, a plaintiff must allege, and ultimately prove, that he or she 1) has incurred or else soon will incur an individualized injury, 2) caused by the defendant he or she wants to sue, and 3) that he or she requests relief from that injury that the court is legally empowered to grant (author’s formulation of “standing-to-sue” elements). In Gutierrez v. Saenz, US Sup.Ct.Slip Opinion of June 26, 2025, the Court ruled that the lower federal courts had jurisdiction over claims by Mr. Gutierrez that the Due Process of Law Clause of the 14th Amendment required the prosecutor of his completed murder trial, in which he was found guilty, to conduct post-trial DNA testing of crime scene evidence, which might (or might not) produce evidence sufficient to relieve him of his death sentence. After finding the existence of jurisdiction in the trial court, the Court remanded the case to the lower courts for further proceedings on the merits, or the lack thereof, of Mr. Gutierrez’s Due Process claims.
The vote on the Court was 6-3, with Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch dissenting. The dissenting Justices argued that the trial court had lost jurisdiction in subsequent proceedings, and expressed an unapologetic anger toward the majority Justices for allowing yet another post-trial proceeding to challenge a death sentence already imposed on a murder trial defendant.
Comment: In this case, the Court relied on a single precedent of its own, in which the Court had condoned judicial speculation about what a prosecutor might do in similar circumstances as “relief” sufficient to meet Article III jurisdictional standards. Justice Barrett, who voted with the majority, even expressed her skepticism about that one aspect of Mr. Gutierrez’s claims. I believe Justice Barrett’s limited skepticism about the Court’s total result is more faithful to Constitutional text and context than any of the other Opinions rendered in this case.
Dan D. Rhea
RECENT RULINGS 