Judiciary Act of 1789 1 Stat. 73 (1789)
Author | Paul M. Bator |
Pages | 1495-1496 |
Page 1495
Article III of the Constitution constitutes an authorizing charter for a system of national courts to exercise the JUDICIAL POWER OF THE UNITED STATES, but is not self-executing, needing legislation to bring it to life. Accordingly, the First Congress, in its twentieth enactment, turned to the creation of a JUDICIAL SYSTEM for the new nation. Its work?the First Judiciary Act, approved September 24, 1789?has ever since been celebrated as "a great law." The statute, obeying a constitutional command, constituted a SUPREME COURT. It created the office of Attorney General of the United States. It devised a judicial organization that was destined to survive for a century. And, by providing for Supreme Court review of state court judgments involving issues of federal law, it created a profoundly significant instrument for consolidating and protecting national power.
But it is the decision of the First Congress to take up the constitutional option to establish a system of federal courts "inferior" to the Supreme Court that has been characterized as the act's "transcendent achievement." The Constitution does not require the creation of inferior courts. Nevertheless, the decision to do so came swiftly, actuated by the unanimously shared view that an effective maritime commerce?trading lifeblood for the thirteen states?needed a dependable nationwide body of maritime law, and by a consensus that the most reliable method to assure its development would be to entrust it to a distinctive body of national courts. (Far more controversy surrounded the view, also finding expression in the act, that national courts were needed to assure out-of-state litigants protection against parochial prejudices.)
The act thus created a system of federal courts of original (trial) jurisdiction, establishing a tradition that has survived without interruption to this day. On the other hand, the act gave these courts the authority to adjudicate only a small fraction of the CASES AND CONTROVERSIES encompassed by the federal judicial power, attesting to the clear contemporaneous understanding of the Constitution that it is for Congress to determine which, if any, of the cases, within the federal judicial power should be adjudicated in the first instance in a federal tribunal.
The first section of the act provided for a Supreme Court, consisting of a Chief Justice and five associates. Below this, the act created a curious bifurcated system. The...
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