JUDICIARY ACT OF 1789

JUDICIARY ACT OF 1789. While the framers of the U.S. Constitution agreed upon the division of the federal government into three branches, the delegates disagreed over whether the Constitution should create inferior federal courts. In the end, the Constitution left the issue open, and the construction of Article III, establishing the national courts, was left to Congress. At the initial session of the First Congress in 1789, the initial Judiciary Act was passed; it would serve as the model for all sub-sequent judicial legislation.

The path of the legislation involved the appointment of the Senate Committee for Organizing the Judiciary, consisting of members from each state. The committee had to overcome residual hostility to the idea of national courts, the relative youth of the government, and the fierce partisanship that threatened to erupt at any time. In addition to these problems, very few of the senators on the committee were lawyers. The Judiciary Act, or Senate Bill No. 1, was adopted in September 1789—following an entire congressional session of debate—as a compromise and, presumably, as a temporary measure.

The most important set of provisions in the Judiciary Act of 1789 created a three-tiered federal court structure. At the top was the United States Supreme Court (the only one expressly named in the Constitution), to consist of one chief justice and five associate justices. At the bottom were the district courts, one judge to each court and one court for each of the thirteen states, except for the states of Virginia and Massachusetts, each of which had two. The middle tier was the circuit courts, which would sit twice a year in each of the districts. There were three circuits to be ridden by the justices, one each for southern, eastern, and middle states. The original plan was for the circuit courts to consist of two Supreme Court justices joining the district court judge, but the difficulty of riding circuits very quickly resulted in only one Supreme Court justice on a circuit court.

The Constitution gave a limited amount of original jurisdiction to the Supreme Court, but the 1789 Judiciary Act made the district courts and the circuit courts the preeminent trial courts. Under the terms of the act, many civil matters, particularly admiralty cases, came before the district courts, and the circuit courts, among other assignments, had a general federal criminal jurisdiction. The lower federal courts were directed to follow the laws and procedures of the states in which they sat. Because of the politically controversial nature of the creation of the federal courts, these provisions of the first judiciary act were designed to calm fears about the possibly unbridled discretion of a national judiciary. The Supreme Court was prohibited from overturning factual determinations made by lower courts, and while the federal courts were permitted to hear cases that involved citizens from different states (diversity jurisdiction), they were not yet granted the jurisdiction to hear every matter that might arise under federal law, and indeed, under certain circumstances, the federal courts could not rule on federal questions until the highest state court had passed upon the issue. These provisions were designed to counter critics who feared that the national courts would intervene in all areas, rendering the state judiciaries impotent and obsolete.

The three-tiered structure first established by the 1789 legislation remains in effect, although the judges in the middle tier now sit in their own courts and exercise only appellate jurisdiction. The matters that can be heard by the federal courts have expanded far beyond the contemplation of the 1789 law, although its structural and jurisdictional provisions lingered until almost the end of the nineteenth century, and its procedural provisions still govern the basic operations of the federal courts.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Goebel, Julius. History of the Supreme Court of the United States. Vol. 1. Antecedents and Beginnings to 1801. New York: Macmillan, 1971.

Marcus, Maeva, ed. Origins of the Federal Judiciary: Essays on the Judiciary Act of 1789. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Ritz, Wilfred J. Rewriting the History of the Judiciary Act of 1789: Exposing Myths, Challenging Premises, and Using New Evidence. Edited by Wythe Holt and L. H. LaRue. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990.

Stephen B.Presser

See alsoCircuits .