Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
The condition of business in the courts of the United States is such that
there seems to be an imperative necessity for remedial legislation on the
subject. Some of these courts are so overburdened with pending causes that
the delays in determining litigation amount often to a denial of justice.
Among the plans suggested for relief is one submitted by the
Attorney-General. Its main features are: The transfer of all the original
jurisdiction of the circuit courts to the district courts and an increase
of judges for the latter where necessary; an addition of judges to the
circuit courts, and constituting them exclusively courts of appeal, and
reasonably limiting appeals thereto; further restrictions of the right to
remove causes from the State to Federal courts; permitting appeals to the
Supreme Court from the courts of the District of Columbia and the
Territories only in the same cases as they are allowed from State courts,
and guarding against an unnecessary number of appeals from the circuit
courts.
I approve the plan thus outlined, and recommend the legislation necessary
for its application to our judicial system.
The present mode of compensating United States marshals and district
attorneys should, in my opinion, be changed. They are allowed to charge
against the Government certain fees for services, their income being
measured by the amount of such fees within a fixed limit as to their annual
aggregate. This is a direct inducement for them to make their fees in
criminal cases as large as possible in an effort to reach the maximum sum
permitted. As an entirely natural consequence, unscrupulous marshals are
found encouraging frivolous prosecutions, arresting people on petty charges
of crime and transporting them to distant places for examination and trial,
for the purpose of earning mileage and other fees; and district attorneys
uselessly attend criminal examinations far from their places of residence
for the express purpose of swelling their accounts against the Government.
The actual expenses incurred in these transactions are also charged against
the Government.
Thus the rights and freedom of our citizens are outraged and public
expenditures increased for the purpose of furnishing public officers
pretexts for increasing the measure of their compensation.
I think marshals and district attorneys should be paid salaries, adjusted
by a rule which will make them commensurate with services fairly rendered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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