USDC - District of New Hampshire - Preface, Acknowledgements & Introduction
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Home < General Information < History < Preface, Acknowledgements & Introduction
Preface
One of the casualties in modern jurisprudence is a sense of history, a feeling of movement and direction. This book grew from the concern that many of the citizens of this State had no access to information as to how New Hampshire's federal court system evolved throughout its two-hundred plus year history. This book is not intended to be a comprehensive legal discussion of the jurisdiction and procedures of our federal courts, but rather a historical overview of the people, events, and places that have shaped the federal court system in New Hampshire.
As the Table of Contents indicates, I have attempted to document those areas in the court's development that would be most interesting to the citizenry-at-large. As this is the first attempt to consolidate these 200 years of achievement, there will no doubt be some deficiencies, which future editions must rectify. Accordingly, I sincerely invite and request reader comment on every aspect of this book.
Acknowledgement
While I bear sole responsibility for the content of this book, my role in its publication was more of a facilitator than an author. This work was too widely shared to permit specific acknowledgment of all who helped, but special mention must be made of the contributions of five student assistants who rendered indispensable aid. Their dedication, skill, and effort contributed significantly to the preparation of this book. Brad Wilder, who was a senior at Dartmouth College during the summer of 1988 when this project began, was the sole author during the formative period of the manuscript. It was through Brad's efforts in drafting a temporary edition that I realized the potential of such endeavor.
During the summer of 1989 two students, Jason Sapsin, then a sophomore at Williams College, and Rahul P. Ranadive, a senior at Dartmouth College, shared the research and writing duties. Jason helped me structure this book from a seemingly impassable maze of research material and, more importantly, gave the manuscript a singular voice. Jason returned the summer of 1990 after spending the year studying at Exeter College, Oxford, England to put some finishing touches on the manuscript. In the Summer of 1991 another two students contributed to the creation of the finished product. Scott Good, a first year student at Nova School of Law was a researcher. Siobhan Keenan, a senior at Dartmouth College, also performed some research and completed the final editing.
These five individuals deserve high praise for their dedication in combing through hundreds of court records and documents culling out the relevant historical and cultural material and weaving it around the judicial personnel of this District. Thanks go to my entire staff for their comments and observations on the manuscript and special thanks as well to Robert Axenfeld, a student of Franklin Pierce Law School, for his help.
My editors, Kathie Northrup and Cathy Green have been a source of enormous help, especially during the final stages of this book, and I am most grateful for their interest and constructive advice.
The following organizations provided us with access to collections of documents, materials and facilities with unfailing patience: National Archives - Boston Branch (James K. Owens, Director); National Archives - Washington, DC (Stan Stachefski); New Hampshire Historical Society, Tuck Library (David Smolen, Special collections Librarian).
I also wish to thank all those who kindly provided photographs and drawings during the course of our research. I regret that only a small number of them can be reproduced here. Those that are featured in this book are used with appropriate permission from the Historical Society of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
To all these helpful people, I take this opportunity to express my gratitude.
Introduction
To most students of American history or politics the phrase "checks and balances" is an old and familiar one that describes how the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the Federal government operate both with and against one another. What is perhaps less familiar is how each branch of the federal government is organized, and in particular, how the Judicial branch is organized.
The Constitution of the United States, in establishing a judicial structure, states that "the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court and in such inferior courts as Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." (Article III, Sect. 1) The United States today is of a size and strength the original framers of the Constitution could hardly have imagined--yet those sparse lines provide authority for the existence and operation of hundreds of federal courts and almost one thousand federal judges throughout the United States and its territories. The Federal Judiciary, headed by the Supreme Court, is a gigantic network that has been created under the authority of the Constitution to serve the entire nation.
This network did not spring to life straight from the pages of the Constitution. Like so many governmental practices and institutions in place today, the federal judiciary evolved through the continuing development of government which our Constitution allows.
The dominant force in the original formation of the Federal Judiciary, and, indeed, in the birth and ratification of the Constitution itself, was the battle between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists. Central to this battle has always been the question of power, its uses and abuses. The Federalists believed a powerful central government was the best way to rule efficiently. The Anti-Federalists believed that autonomous states would better answer the needs of the people. They felt that a powerful central government would interfere with the states' abilities to govern themselves. Both sides had strong arguments in their favor. These arguments were at the forefront of the minds of men like Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton; as theoreticians, they had matured politically in a climate which demanded answers to these questions of government. As revolutionaries, their genius lay in attempting to implement those answers.
The desire for a limitation of power might be seen as being at the heart of the "federal issue". The states, having just recently prosecuted a war for what they felt were their just rights and freedoms, proved unwilling to subordinate themselves to a new central authority -- even one of their own devising. This was the major stumbling block to the Constitution as it was being drafted and, later, as it was being ratified in the individual states. The issue of centralized power surfaced repeatedly as the federal government established itself and tested the limits of its power; seeking to exercise governmental functions and rights that it believed it had been granted, either expressly or implicitly, by the Constitution.
The federal battle eventually moved into Congress itself. All bills and resolutions affecting the nation and the several states came under intense scrutiny, often by men who had been elected on the basis of where they stood concerning the federal issue. When the Judiciary Act of 1789 was passed, it was a significant step in the development of a centralized government, one carefully watched by the Anti-Federalists.
While the Judiciary Article (Article III of the Constitution) mandated the creation of a Supreme Court, it left to Congress the decision of whether there should be any inferior federal courts. Since there was much opposition to their creation, the decision to permit, but not require, such courts was one of the important compromises of the 1787 Constitutional Convention which drafted the first Constitution establishing the new federal government.
When a quorum of twelve of the twenty members of the first Senate convened on April 6, 1789, they promptly appointed a committee of ten senators to draft a judiciary bill. Neither the committee nor, indeed, the whole Senate, could be described as a harmonious group. The committee included five who had served in the Convention of 1787: Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut (later Chief Justice), William Patterson of New Jersey, Caleb Strong of Massachusetts, William Few of Georgia, and Paine Wingate of New Hampshire. The committee also included Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, a vociferous Anti-Federalist, and William Maclay of Pennsylvania, who opposed the Bill in the committee and the Senate. The Bill was introduced on June 12, 1789 as Senate Bill No.1. Oliver Ellsworth was a principal draftsman of the Bill and its most persuasive advocate. The Bill underwent extended debate in the Senate. As a result some changes and compromises had to be made before it could pass.
The main subject of debate was whether there should be any district courts. Anti-Federalists sought additional amendments to eliminate lower federal courts on the ground that review of the state court decisions by the Supreme Court on writ of error was sufficient assurance that the Constitution and Acts of Congress would be enforced. They then attempted to eliminate diversity of citizenship jurisdiction and equity jurisdiction, but were unsuccessful.
While the Congress was considering the Judiciary Act, it also had to consider the numerous amendments to the Constitution proposed by state conventions. A number of these proposals would have amended Article III in ways inconsistent with the Judiciary Act. The first ten Amendments approved, (the Bill of Rights), were consistent with the Judiciary Act. But early in September of 1789 the Senate rejected the proposed constitutional amendments eliminating district courts and diversity of citizenship jurisdiction as these would have conflicted with the Act. On September 24, 1789, President Washington signed the Judiciary Act to establish the Judicial Courts of the United States (First Congress, Session 1, Chapter 20, 1789). The decision of Congress to exercise its constitutional option to establish a system of federal trial courts has been hailed as its transcendent achievement.
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The original thirteen judicial districts were not identical to the thirteen original states. North Carolina and Rhode Island had not yet joined the union by ratifying the Constitution, therefore they were not given federal courts. Maine, then a part of Massachusetts, and Kentucky, then a part of Virginia, were constituted as districts separate from their states. A lasting precedent was that no district overlapped a state boundary.
The Act created three tiers of courts: the Supreme Court, the Circuit Courts and the District Courts--the latter two being trial courts. Except for the District Courts of Kentucky and Maine, which were given the same original jurisdiction as circuit courts, the jurisdiction of the district courts was strictly limited by the Act of 1789. Although the Circuit Courts were the important trial courts, the Act made no provision for the office of circuit judge. The bench of a Circuit Court was composed of one or two Supreme Court justices sitting with the district judge of the district where the court was held. The Act not only provided for courts and judges, but also for the personnel necessary to support them: namely a Clerk of Court, a United States Attorney, and a United States Marshal.
The Judiciary Act of 1789, like the Judiciary Article of the Constitution, and like the Constitution itself, was a compromise. In obtaining a federal judiciary of trial courts, the Federalists had to accept drastic limitations on those courts' jurisdiction to cases arising under the Constitution or the Acts of Congress. But the Act was a great legislative achievement for the Congress of a new nation. There had been no prior model to guide its creators, for no other country had ever established a dual system of federal courts and state courts. It was left to future leaders to deal with any shortcomings and to adapt the system to meet changing needs.