Since Congress can determine how much of the Constitution applies to its territories, I don’t see the problem you do.

There is no proof Congress sought to target this particular case. Nor do I think this is equivalent to Congress trying to transform the adjudicative impact of a Presidential pardon. No facts in this case suggest such Congressional malice. Moreover, the litigants in this case were all political actors squabbling over their interpretation of an ambiguous law: specifically, the Governor and the Attorney General of Guam. None were private individuals pursuing individual rights. Having the Guam Supreme Court finally decide the matter would have made no difference, given that its decision was affirmed and unsettled.

So I fail to see how your argument is relevant.

No one doubts that Congress may shift jurisdiction over appeals from courts it creates prospectively, it least if all resort to the courts is not eliminated. But, when you strip a court of jurisdiction it had at the time over currently pending cases and don’t provide a guaranteed replacement venue (SCOTUS made its own cert determination and was not bound by the 9th Circuit’s cert grant), the legislative action takes on a “writ of attainder”/”separation of powers interference” quality. Retroactive jurisdictional legislation of this type meddles with the active court docket for a well defined set of cases in a way that necessarily impacts the merits.

The issue raised by this case is not the territorial status of Guantanamo, it is the power of Congress to destroy the rights of litigants which were vested when suit was filed, that have not been adjudicated merely due to delays beyond their control from the courts themselves by depriving the courts handling the cases of jurisdiction.

Thanks for that explanation.

But I think your characterization of Guam is a bit off. Guam’s Supreme Court is a territorial court under Congressional authority. The reason Congress can shift review to any federal court it wants is that there isn’t any “geographical proximity” limitation you can read into The Territorial Clause, which states: “The Congress shall have Powers to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States”.

So Congress isn’t technically “stripping” jurisdiction. It is deciding what jurisdiction is proper under its plenary authority to determine territorial court jurisdiction.

Guantanamo, unlike Guam, is not a territory of the United States. Is your point that the lease permitting American control of Guantanamo is federal property?

The False Claims case can be overruled at any time by statute.

The unanimous portion of the case involving Guam’s debt limitations implicitly assents to a law stripping the 9th Circuit of jurisdiction over a pending appeal from the Guam Supreme Court. Retroactive jurisdiction stripping laws, of course, are highly relevant to war on terrorism cases and also to a variety of other highly charged political end runs around the courts.

The Guam case, of course, didn’t strip all federal courts of the power to review the case in question. It simply shifted the forum from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, a venue Republicans don’t like, to the U.S. Supreme Court, a venue with far less capacity to review lower court cases. The text of the case doesn’t make clear what the motive for the retroactive change in jurisdiction was for Congress.

Of course, the jurisdiction stripping Congress engaged in doesn’t raise the specter of denying a pending case all review by denying it any forum, as many recent jurisdiction stripping statutes have done. There is also nothing inherently wrong with treating the Guam Supreme Court more like a state supreme court and less like a U.S. District Court, although, of course, as a unique creature of statute, it is really neither.

But, there can be little doubt that the government will raise the Guam case in support of its other litigation involving the validity of jurisdiction stripping provisions of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and the Detainee Treatment Act which proceeded it.