Center Senior Fellow Seth Frotman Authors Op-Ed Calling on a Century-Old Law to Rein in Modern-Day Overreach by Federal Courts

July 11, 2026

Seth Frotman and Ben Kaufman’s op-ed in The Capitol Forum calls attention to the 1937 Tax Injunction Act, (TIA), which generally bars federal courts from blocking state taxes. The authors hold up the statute as a model of beneficial "jurisdiction stripping" that protects democratically chosen reform in the states from interference by corporate interests. 

Using the TIA as an exemplar, the authors argue that Congress can and should more broadly assert its own authority, and prevent current examples of overreach by and through the federal judiciary, by taking a number of steps:

  • randomly assigning cases across circuits, 

  • creating a dedicated administrative law circuit, 

  • rewriting the Administrative Procedure Act standard of review, and/or 

  • stripping federal review entirely in some policy areas. 

Read the full piece, “The 90-Year-Old Law That Shows How to Tame the Federal Courts,” here.