For centuries, courts and legal commentators defined “jurisdiction” by reference to a court’s “power.” A court that lacked jurisdiction, under this conception, simply lacked the ability to bind the parties, and its resulting rulings could therefore be regarded by both litigants and later courts as void and of no legal effect. But in the middle decades of the twentieth century, the Supreme Court and other U.S. courts strongly embraced the so-called bootstrap doctrine—a distinctive branch of preclusion law that severely limits the ability to collaterally attack a judgment based on a claimed lack of jurisdiction. Because the bootstrap doctrine effectively allows courts to establish their own jurisdiction simply by concluding that they possess it, critics of the power-based conception contend that the definition no longer provides a descriptively plausible or conceptually coherent account of jurisdiction’s identity.

This Article defends the traditional power-based conception of jurisdiction’s identity as both conceptually coherent and normatively desirable. The key to reconciling jurisdiction-as-power with the bootstrap doctrine is to recognize that different criteria may be appropriate for different decision makers at different stages of the adjudicatory process. From the perspective of the rendering court, the applicable jurisdictional rules supply the sole criteria of legal validity. A conscientious judge seeking to work within the confines of her own authority has no discretion to ignore jurisdictional limits or to proceed to a final judgment unless she determines that jurisdiction actually exists. But from the perspective of a later court called upon to recognize an earlier court’s judgment, the criteria of validity are supplied instead by the bootstrap doctrine. That doctrine would sometimes require a later court to act as if jurisdiction were present in the original proceeding even if it was not. But such “as if” exceptions are a familiar part of our law and are not generally understood to supplant or displace the underlying legal rules.

The power-based conception of jurisdiction is not only descriptively plausible and conceptually coherent; it also facilitates jurisdiction’s distinctive role in structuring and allocating decision-making authority between different actors and institutions. Understanding jurisdiction as power can also lead to a deeper understanding of jurisdiction’s necessary effects and illustrate why several of the effects often associated with jurisdiction—such as nonwaivability and insusceptibility to equitable exceptions—are not, in fact, essential to jurisdiction’s identity. Finally, a clearer understanding of jurisdiction’s identity as the “power” of a rendering court can also help inform and clarify various jurisdictional doctrines and lead to a better understanding of the federal judiciary’s role in the constitutional structure.

几个世纪以来，法院和法律评论员通过引用法院的“权力”来定义“管辖权”。一个没有管辖权的法院，在这个概念下，只是缺乏约束当事人的能力，其裁决因此可以被当事人双方和后来的法院视为无效，不具有法律效力。但在 20 世纪中叶，最高法院和其他美国法院大力支持所谓的自举原则——排除法的一个独特分支，它严重限制了以声称缺乏管辖权为由附带攻击判决的能力。因为引导原则有效地允许法院简单地通过断定他们拥有它来建立自己的管辖权，

本文捍卫传统的基于权力的管辖权身份概念，认为它在概念上是连贯的，在规范上也是可取的。调和作为权力的管辖权与自举原则的关键是认识到不同的标准可能适用于处于审判过程不同阶段的不同决策者。从渲染法院的角度来看，适用的管辖规则提供了法律有效性的唯一标准。一位尽职尽责的法官在她自己的权力范围内寻求工作，除非她确定管辖权确实存在，否则无权无视管辖权限制或进行最终判决。但从要求后一法院承认早先法院判决的角度来看，有效性标准由自举原则提供。该学说有时会要求后来的法院行事，就好像原始诉讼中存在管辖权一样，即使事实并非如此。但这种“好像”例外是我们法律中常见的部分，通常不被理解为取代或取代基本的法律规则。

基于权力的管辖权概念不仅在描述上合理而且在概念上是连贯的；它还有助于管辖权在不同行为者和机构之间构建和分配决策权方面的独特作用。将管辖权理解为权力还可以更深入地理解管辖权的必要影响，并说明为什么通常与管辖权相关的一些影响——例如不可放弃和对衡平法例外的不敏感——实际上对于管辖权的身份并不是必不可少的。最后，更清楚地理解管辖权作为审判法院“权力”的身份也有助于告知和澄清各种管辖权学说，并导致更好地理解联邦司法机构在宪法结构中的作用。