Jurisdiction Stripping: The PROTECT Act"The PROTECT Act was enacted without any consideration of the views of the judiciary. It surely improves the legislative process at least to ask the judiciary its views on such a significant piece of legislation."
—U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist, in the 2003 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary. |
In 2003, Congress passed a law known as the “PROTECT Act,” requiring special scrutiny by the Justice Department of judges across the nation who sentence convicts to shorter terms than are provided by federal sentencing guidelines. Judges traditionally have had discretion to make sentencing decisions as they see fit. Then-Chief Justice Rehnquist reacted angrily to the act, charging that it marked a breakdown in the traditional interaction between Congress and the courts. Rehnquist, one of the more conservative members of the court, warned that the act “ could appear to be an unwarranted and ill-considered effort to intimidate individual judges in the performance of their judicial duties.”