property in question. On appeal
to the Supreme Court, counsel for the assignee contended that Sec. 11 was
void because the right of a citizen of any State to sue citizens of
another in the federal courts flowed directly from article III and
Congress could not restrict that right. The Supreme Court unanimously
rejected these contentions and held that since the Constitution had not
established the inferior courts or distributed to them their respective
powers, and since Congress had the authority to establish such courts,
it could define their jurisdiction and withhold from any court of its
own creation jurisdiction of any of the enumerated cases and
controversies in article III.[617] Sheldon _v._ Sill has been cited,
quoted, and reaffirmed many times.[618] Its effect and that of the cases
following it is that as regards the jurisdiction of the lower federal
courts two elements are necessary to confer jurisdiction: first, the
Constitution must have given the courts the capacity to receive it, and
second, an act of Congress must have conferred it. The manner in which
the inferior federal courts acquire jurisdiction, its character, the
mode of its exercise, and the objects of its operation are remitted
without check or limitation to the wisdom of the legislature.[619]

JUDICIAL POWER UNDER THE EMERGENCY PRICE CONTROL ACT

The plenary power of Congress to withhold and restrict jurisdiction was
given renewed vitality by the Emergency Price Control Act of 1942[620]
and the cases arising therefrom. Fearful that the price control program
might be effectively nullified by injunctions, Congress provided for a
special court and special procedures for contesting the validity of
price regulations. In Lockerty _v._ Phillips[621] the Supreme Court
sustained the power of Congress to confine equity jurisdiction, to
restrain enforcement of the act to the specially created Emergency Court
of Appeals, with appeal to the Supreme Court. The Court went much
farther than this in Yakus _v._ United States,[622] and held that the
provision of the act conferring on the Emergency Court of Appeals and
the Supreme Court exclusive jurisdiction to determine the validity of
any regulation or order, and providing that no court should have
jurisdiction or power to consider the validity of any regulation,
precluded the plea of invalidity of such a regulation as a defense to
its violation in a criminal proceeding in a district court. Although
Justice Rut