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federal government

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | 2008 | The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

federal government or federation, government of a union of states in which sovereignty is divided between a central authority and component state authorities. A federation differs from a confederation in that the central power acts directly upon individuals as well as upon states, thus creating the problem of dual allegiance. Substantial power over matters affecting the people as a whole, such as external affairs, commerce, coinage, and the maintenance of military forces, are usually granted to the central government. Nevertheless, retention of jurisdiction over local affairs by states is compatible with the federal system and makes allowance for local feelings. The chief political problem of a federal system of government is likely to be the allocation of sovereignty, because the need for unity among the federating states may conflict with their desire for autonomy. The Greek city-states failed to solve this problem, although religious and political federations were often attempted and the Aetolian and Achaean leagues had many of the institutions of federal government. The primacy of the central over the state governments was not resolved in the United States until after the Civil War. The distribution of powers between the federal and state governments is usually accomplished by means of a written constitution, for a federation does not exist if authority can be allocated by ordinary legislation. A fairly uniform legal system, as well as cultural and geographic affinities, is usually necessary for the success of a federation. Varieties of federation include the Swiss, where the federative principle is carried into the executive branch of government; the Australian, which closely reflects American states' rights and judicial doctrines; and the Canadian, which reverses common federative practice and allots residuary rights to the dominion government. Other examples of federal governments are the German Empire of 1871 and the present state of Germany, modern Russia, Mexico, South Africa, and India.

Bibliography: See J. Bryce, The American Commonwealth (rev. ed. 1959); K. Wheare, Federal Government (4th ed. 1964); D. J. Elazar, American Federalism (2d ed. 1972); W. H. Stewart, Concepts of Federalism (1984); H. Bakvis and W. M. Chandler, ed., Federalism and the Role of the State (1987); K. L. Hall, Federalism (1987).

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"federal government." The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2008. Encyclopedia.com. 29 Nov. 2009 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

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Federal Government, Judicial Branch

The Oxford Companion to United States History | 2001 | | © The Oxford Companion to United States History 2001, originally published by Oxford University Press 2001. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Federal Government, Judicial Branch. The framework of the federal judicial system was established by the Judiciary Act of 1789. Its principal author, Senator Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, would in 1796 become the second chief justice of the United States. Because Article III of the Constitution merely provided for “one Supreme Court and such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish,” it fell to the fledgling legislative branch to organize the judicial branch. It did so in the seminal 1789 Judiciary Act, which incorporated into the national judicial system the fundamental principle of federal supremacy.

The statute provided for a Supreme Court composed of a chief justice and five associate justices, thirteen federal district courts of one judge each, and three circuit courts, each consisting of two justices of the Supreme Court sitting jointly with one district court judge. The legislation outlined the several courts' jurisdiction in considerable detail and spelled out their general organizational and procedural parameters. A key section of the act brought the state courts directly under federal appellate jurisdiction by providing for appeals from state courts to federal courts. This crucial power of federal judicial review over decisions by the state judiciary was challenged by the states in the U.S. Supreme Court, then headed by Chief Justice John Marshall, in four seminal cases—all of which the states lost: United States v. Peters (1809), Fletcher v. Peck (1810), Martin v. Hunter's Lessee (1816), and Cohens v. Virginia (1821). The opinions, two written by Marshall and two by Joseph Story, confirmed in perpetuity federal judicial supremacy and authority.

Another major issue of judicial power—perhaps the major issue—soon came to the fore: namely, the power of judicial review, not only of actions by the states but also by the legislative and executive branches of the federal government. “Judicial review” in the United States is the power of a court (after painstaking reflection and due regard for legal precedent and the principle of judicial restraint) to hold unconstitutional and hence unenforceable any law, official action based on a law, or other action by a public official that it deems to be in conflict with the Constitution. (The judicial review process also may result, of course, in the finding that the law or official action in question is constitutional.)

The Supreme Court confronted the issue of judicial review in Marbury v. Madison (1803). The case turned on the fact that Congress, in the Judiciary Act of 1789, had extended to the Supreme Court the power to issue writs of mandamus (Latin for “we command”), an ancient Anglo‐Saxon writ ordering a public official to perform his official duty. Petitioner Marbury, whose appointment as a justice of the peace by President John Adams was deliberately not delivered by newly elected President Thomas Jefferson's secretary of state, James Madison, asked the Supreme Court to issue a writ of mandamus to compel the delivery of his commission. Although expressing sympathy for Marbury's plight, Marshall, speaking for a unanimous Court, rejected his petition. By granting the Supreme Court the power to issue writs of mandamus, Marshall held, Congress had unconstitutionally added to the Court's original jurisdiction spelled out in Article III of the Constitution. These powers could only be changed by an amendment to the Constitution, the chief justice went on, not by a mere law. “An act repugnant to the Constitution is void,” Marshall concluded, and “it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is”. Thus was offically born the Court's ultimate power, that of judicial review.

Readdressing the organization of the judicial branch, Congress in the Judiciary Act of 1801, created six new circuit courts to be staffed with their own judges rather than by circuit‐riding Supreme Court justices (who loathed that collateral duty). In addition, the act established a number of new district courts. For jurisdictional as well as political and economic reasons, the Judiciary Act of 1801 was repealed once the Jefferson administration took office and replaced by the Circuit Court Act of 1802. This measure, the last to change the federal judicial structure until after the Civil War, divided the country into six rather than three circuits, assigning a Supreme Court justice to each.

Reconstruction Era politics resulted in various changes to both the number of circuit courts, and to the increasing or decreasing size of the Supreme Court. In 1869, however, responding to insistent pleas from the justices, Congress stabilized the Court at its present membership of nine and added nine circuit judges to relieve the Supreme Court justices of some of the burden of circuit riding. That duty ended entirely in the 1880s, although each of the nine justices continues to be responsibile for at least one of the now thirteen circuits.

Along with the federal courts mandated by Article III of the Constitution, known as the “constitutional” courts, Congress as the need arose created additional specialized courts under its constitutional power (art. 1, sec. 8, clause 9) to “constitute Tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court”. Known as “legislative” rather than “constitutional” courts, these include the U.S. Court of Claims, the Tax Court, the U.S. Court of Military Appeals, and the U.S. Veterans Court. However, the center of gravity of federal judicial power remains in the three‐tiered constitutional court structure. The number of Supreme Court justices remains nine, despite President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's ill‐fated 1937 attempt to persuade Congress to increase the membership to as many as fifteen. This bill, a product of Roosevelt's frustration with the Court's hostility toward New Deal legislation, elicited a fierce public reaction. What did change as the nation grew was the size of the high tribunal's docket, which by the end of the twentieth century had reached some seven thousand petitions for review annually. Most of these were disposed of by memorandum orders, but one hundred or so typically resulted in formal opinions.

The two lower constitutional court structures, the federal circuit and district courts, also remained in place as the twentieth century ended, but the number of courts, judges, and cases had all increased markedly. The thirteen U.S. circuit courts of appeals in 1998 (including the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, often called the second most important court in the land, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit) comprised a statutorily authorized total of 179 judges who handled some 50,000 cases annually. At the lowest level of the federal constitutional judiciary stand the 94 workhorse U.S. district courts, where federal trials commence and whose 649 judges field some 100,000 civil and criminal cases annually.

In general, the judicial branch of the federal government has enjoyed the people's trust, ranking above both the legislative and executive branches in poll after poll. It is endowed with awesome power, but, headed by the Supreme Court, it remains the nation's natural forum for individuals and groups as well as the fundamental guardian of law and order. On the whole, the system has done well in maintaining the balance between continuity and change that constitutes the sine qua non for stability in the governmental process of a democracy.
See also other “Federal Government” essays; New Deal Era, The

Bibliography

Charles Warren , The Supreme Court in United States History, 1922–1935.
Lawrence M. Friedman , A History of American Law, 2d ed., 1986.
Henry M. Hart and and Herbert Wechsler , The Federal Courts and the Federal System, 1988.
Sheldon Goldman and and Charles M. Lamb , Judicial Conflict and Consensus: Behavioral Studies of American Appellate Courts, 1989.
Daniel J. Meador , American Courts, 1991.
Charles M. Coffin , Appellate Courts, Lawyering and Judging, 1994.
Daniel J. Meador and and J.S. Bernstein , Appellate Courts in the United States, 1994.
Henry J. Abraham , The Judiciary, 10th ed., 1997.
Henry J. Abraham , The Judicial Process, 7th ed., 1998.
Henry J. Abraham , Justices, Presidents, and Senators, 1999.

Henry J. Abraham

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Paul S. Boyer. "Federal Government, Judicial Branch." The Oxford Companion to United States History. Oxford University Press. 2001. Encyclopedia.com. 29 Nov. 2009 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

Paul S. Boyer. "Federal Government, Judicial Branch." The Oxford Companion to United States History. Oxford University Press. 2001. Encyclopedia.com. (November 29, 2009). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O119-FederalGovernmntJdclBrnch.html

Paul S. Boyer. "Federal Government, Judicial Branch." The Oxford Companion to United States History. Oxford University Press. 2001. Retrieved November 29, 2009 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O119-FederalGovernmntJdclBrnch.html

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