Order of the Courts

Alexander Hamilton famously claimed that "the judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power" in the U.S. government. Congress holds the purse strings. The president holds the sword. The courts have only their judgments.

Yet those judgments have proven strong enough to bend Congress's will and check presidential power many times in the 200 years since Hamilton wrote. Clearly, the judiciary isn't so weak after all. So let's consider the order of America's federal courts, by the numbers.

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