Ex Parte McCardle

Petitioner
United States
Respondent
William H. McCardle
Petitioner's Claim
That McCardle had incited insurrection and impeded post-Civil War Reconstruction.
Chief Lawyers for Petitioner
Matthew H. Carpenter, Lyman Trumbull
Chief Lawyers for Respondent
Jeremiah S. Black, David Dudley Field, Charles O'Conor, W. L. Sharkey, RobertJ. Walker
Justices for the Court
Salmon Portland Chase (writing for the Court), Nathan Clifford, David Davis,Robert Cooper Grier, Stephen Johnson Field, Samuel Freeman Miller, Samuel Nelson, Noah Haynes Swayne
Justices Dissenting
None
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
12 April 1869
Decision
That the Supreme Court was without jurisdiction to render a decision, becauseCongress had repealed certain appeals legislation.
Significance
For the first and only time in American history, Congress exercised its authority to prevent the Supreme Court from hearing certain types of politically sensitive cases.
After the Civil War, the victorious Union Army occupied the defeated Confederacy and the period known as Reconstruction began. On 2 March 1867, Congress passed a law entitled "An Act to Provide for the More Efficient Government ofthe Rebel States," which officially provided for the military administrationof the South. The act abolished the legal existence of the Southern states, and divided the Confederacy into a series of military districts, each commanded by a general who possessed extensive powers to suppress any act of defiance.
In the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, public resentment against the Union was particularly high. The city was strategically located on the Mississippi River and had fallen to the Union after a long and bloody battle siege by General Ulysses S. Grant. After the Civil War, the Fourth of July was not celebrated in Vicksburg for 75 years.
William H. McCardle was the editor of a local newspaper, the Vicksburg Times. McCardle published various articles criticizing Reconstruction in general and Major General Edward O. C. Ord in particular. Ord was the CommandingGeneral of the Fourth Military District, which included Vicksburg. General Ord was not amused. He had McCardle arrested in November of 1867 for various offenses relating to inciting insurrection and impeding Reconstruction. On 11November 1867, McCardle sent a petition to the Circuit Court of the U.S. forthe Southern District of Mississippi, asking for a writ of habeas corpus, meaning a court order to free McCardle from illegal imprisonment. The circuit court refused McCardle's request, and McCardle appealed to the Supreme Court.
Congress Denies McCardle Access to Supreme Court
The Supreme Court is the only federal court specifically provided for by theConstitution. Under Article III, section 2, the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction, meaning sole authority, only in "Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party."In all other cases, the Supreme Court has jurisdiction only on appeal from such federal courts as Congress may decide to create and from such state supreme courts. This appellate jurisdiction is expressly subject to "such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make."
On 24 September 1789, Congress passed the Judiciary Act, which was the basisfor the federal court system and gave the Supreme Court various appellate powers. On 5 February 1867, Congress amended the Judiciary Act to enabled the Supreme Court to hear appeals in habeas corpus cases. It was precisely this amendment, called the Habeas Corpus Act of 1867, that enable the Court tohear the McCardle case.
The Radical Republicans who controlled Congress feared that the McCardle case would give the Court an excuse to overturn Reconstruction legislationand end martial law in the South. Therefore, on 27 March 1868, Congress passed a law repealing the appeal provisions of the Habeas Corpus Act of 1867:

And be it further enacted, That so much of the act approved February5, 1867, entitled, `An act to amend an act to establish the judicial courtsof the United States, approved September 24, 1789,' as authorized an appeal from the judgment of the Circuit Court to the Supreme Court of the United States, or the exercise of any such jurisdiction by said Supreme Court, on appeals which have been, or may hereafter be taken, be, and the same is hereby repealed.

The case came before the Supreme Court during the 1868 December term. The hearing focused on the effect of Congress' repeal of the Court's jurisdiction. If the Court did not have jurisdiction, the validity or invalidity of McCardle's imprisonment was irrelevant. Sharkey argued that Congress' action was unconstitutional because it was designed solely to affect the McCardle case:

Its language is general, but, as was universally known, its purpose was specific. If Congress had specifically enacted `that the Supreme Court of the United States shall never publicly give judgment in the case of McCardle, already argued, and on which we anticipate that it will soon deliver judgment, contrary to the views of the majority in Congress, of what it oughtto decide,' its purpose to interfere specifically with and prevent the judgment in this very case would not have been more real or, as a fact, more universally known.

Congress Could Not Be Denied
Carpenter and Trumbull responded by citing the plain language of Article III,section 2 of the Constitution, under which Congress' authority to restrict the Court's appellate jurisdiction could not be denied. Further, Carpenter andTrumbull pointed out that the language of Congress' repeal of the Court's authority "embraces all cases in all time." Although Sharkey was certainly accurate in describing Congress' real motivations, Carpenter and Trumbull correctly pointed out that legally, any assumption that the repeal was aimed specifically at McCardle could not be proven and therefore was "gratuitous and unwarrantable."
By the end of the 1868 December Term, Chief Justice Chase announced the Court's unanimous decision. Chase held that McCardle's appeal was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction, because of Congress' repeal of the Court's authority. Chase stated in blunt terms that Congress had undeniably exercised its power tocreate exceptions to the Court's authority:

The provision of the act of 1867 affirming the appellate jurisdiction of this court in cases of habeas corpus is expressly repealed. It is hardly possible to imagine a plainer instance of positive exception.

The McCardle case was the only time in American history that Congressused its power under the Constitution to prevent the Supreme Court from hearing certain types of politically sensitive cases. There have been periodic movements in Congress to restrict the Court's authority to hear school desegregation cases, school prayer cases, abortion cases and other politically sensitive cases, but nothing has ever happened. However the Court did not completelysurrender to Congress' actions. Only one year later, in 1869, the Court agreed to hear a case very similar to McCardle's called Ex Parte Yerger, and side-stepped Congress' repeal of the Court's authority. Yerger was released from custody before the Court could hear the case and get into any confrontation with Congress. As more than one legal commentator has opined, given theneed for the different branches of government to work peacefully with each other, it may be politically healthy that the limits of congressional power under the Constitution have never been completely clarified.
Related Cases

• Toth v. Quarles, 350 U.S. 11 (1955).
  
• Westmoreland v. CBS, 770 F. 2d 1168 (1984).

Reconstruction
The Reconstruction was the period between 1865 and 1877, directly following the Civil War, in which the federal government attempted to redress imbalancesin the former Confederate states through a series of Draconian measures. President Lincoln had planned to offer the South a relatively liberal peace, andhis successor, Andrew Johnson, approached the situation similarly. Johnson stipulated that Southern states accept the Thirteenth Amendment, which guaranteed civil rights for freed slaves.
With Johnson's effectiveness ended by the commencement of impeachment proceedings against him, the radical Republicans in Congress assumed de factocontrol over the defeated states, and proceeded to impose a harsh peace. Congress made it difficult for the Southern states, now under martial law, to reenter the Union, and though each had gained readmission by 1870, it was withmuch acrimony. Likewise the federal government, while disenfranchising many Southerners, supported government by a coalition of freed slaves and "carpetbaggers."
Southerners reacted through the Ku Klux Klan and other extralegal means. Theold leadership began to resume control, sometimes by proxy. By 1877, the federal government had removed its troops, and the South entered a period of reaction against the abortive attempt at modernization.
Sources
Hurwitz, Howard L. An Encyclopedic Dictionary of American History, NewYork: Washington Square Press, 1974.