John Marshall and the Constitution, a Chronicle of the Supreme CourtCorwin, Edward Samuel
History
John Marshall and the Constitution, a Chronicle of the Supreme Court
Corwin, Edward Samuel
Constitutional history -- United States; Marshall, John, 1755-1835; United States. Supreme Court
This famous measure created a chief justiceship and five associate
justiceships for the Supreme Court; fifteen District Courts, one for
each State of the Union and for each of the two Territories, Kentucky
and Ohio; and, to stand between these, three Circuit Courts consisting
of two Supreme Court justices and the local district judge. The "cases"
and "controversies" comprehended by the Act fall into three groups:
first, those brought to enforce the national laws and treaties, original
jurisdiction of which was assigned to the District Courts; secondly,
controversies between citizens of different States ¹; lastly, cases
brought originally under a state law and in a State Court but finally
coming to involve some claim of right based on the National
Constitution, laws, or treaties. For these the twenty-fifth section of
the Act provided that, where the decision of the highest State Court
competent under the state law to pass upon the case was adverse to the
claim thus set up, an appeal on the issue should lie to the Supreme
Court. This twenty-fifth section received the hearty approval of the
champions of State Rights, though later on it came to be to them an
object of fiercest resentment. In the Senate, as in the Convention, the
artillery of these gentlemen was trained upon the proposed inferior
Federal Judiciary, which they pictured as a sort of Gargantua ready at
any moment "to swallow up the state courts."
¹ Where the national jurisdiction was extended to these in the interest
of providing an impartial tribunal, it was given to the Circuit Courts.
The first nominations for the Supreme Court were sent in by Washington
two days after he had signed the Judiciary Act. As finally constituted,
the original bench consisted of John Jay of New York as Chief Justice,
and of John Rutledge of South Carolina, William Cushing of
Massachusetts, John Blair of Virginia, James Wilson of Pennsylvania, and
James Iredell of North Carolina as Associate Justices. All were known to
be champions of the Constitution, three had been members of the Federal
Convention, four had held high judicial offices in their home States,
and all but Jay were on record as advocates of the principle of judicial
review. Jay was one of the authors of the Federalist, had achieved a
great diplomatic reputation in the negotiations of 1782, and possessed
the political backing of the powerful Livingston family of New York.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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