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, TheBibliography
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
