Abstract: This essay discusses the recent barrage of proposals to curtail the jurisdiction of the federal courts: at least eighteen such proposals were pending in the House of Representatives on June 3, 1981.' Those unfamiliar with the tenor of the pending measures might well conclude that lawyers and legalism had finally taken over Capitol Hill alto- gether, or perhaps that the Nation as a whole had developed an unac- countable fascination with matters that, in more robust times, would have seemed too technical and arcane to be of general concern.