Congressional Powers and Federal Judicial Burdens

Abstract

Professor Beale's Article, Too Many and Yet Too Few: New Principles to Define the Proper Limits for Federal Criminal Jurisdiction, is a well-documented plea for the conservation of federal judicial resources in the face of a burgeoning criminal caseload, caused at least in part by the creation of new federal crimes. The "too many" in the title of Professor Beale's Article refers to the current plethora of federal criminal cases that threaten (in the view of many) a docket crisis in the federal courts. The "too few" refers to the ability of federal prosecutors to pursue only a small fraction of the cases that could be prosecuted under federal law. Moreover, these "too few" cases are generally identical to cases that are prosecuted in state courts, thus raising the question of the utility of federal prosecutions.