OPINION:
“Chief Justice Roberts says courts ‘check the excesses of Congress or the executive’: Reports” (Web, May 8) quotes Mr. Roberts as saying, “…the judiciary is a co-equal branch of government, separate from the others, with the authority to interpret the Constitution as law and strike down…acts of the president.”
The U.S. Constitution, Article III, decrees, “The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in other inferior Courts as the Congress may from to time to time ordain and establish.”
It therefore goes without saying that the Supreme Court is established by the Constitution. But while the Constitution mentions
inferior courts, it also stipulates that they are established by Congress.
The laws establishing these inferior courts–which are all authorized only by powers granted in the Constitution–are in no way able to usurp the Constitution’s dictate that there is “one supreme Court.”
Any powers granted to these inferior courts are thus bestowed by the legislature and can be removed by the legislature.
Actions taken by judges of the inferior courts are therefore subject primarily to the legislation that established them, not only the U.S. Constitution.
These judges do not have constitutional authority to overrule the president, whose powers are established by the Constitution, Article II. That power is only vested in the “one supreme Court” established by the U.S. Constitution, Article III.
JAMES KOUT
Bowie, Maryland
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