The Judiciary Act of 1802 () was a Federal

statute A statute is a formal written enactment of a legislative authority that governs the legal entities of a city, state, or country by way of consent. Typically, statutes command or prohibit something, or declare policy. Statutes are rules made by ...

, enacted on April 29, 1802, to reorganize the federal court system. It restored some elements of the

Judiciary Act of 1801 The Midnight Judges Act (also known as the Judiciary Act of 1801; , and officially An act to provide for the more convenient organization of the Courts of the United States) represented an effort to solve an issue in the U.S. Supreme Court during ...

, which had been adopted by the

Federalist The term ''federalist'' describes several political beliefs around the world. It may also refer to the concept of parties, whose members or supporters called themselves ''Federalists''. History Europe federation In Europe, proponents of de ...

majority in the previous Congress, but was repealed by the

Democratic-Republican The Democratic-Republican Party, known at the time as the Republican Party and also referred to as the Jeffersonian Republican Party among other names, was an American political party founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the early ...

majority earlier in 1802. The 1802 Act effectively cancelled the 1801 Act's legally-called-for reduction in the size of the

Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...

. The 1801 Act had provided that the Court's size would be reduced by one Justice to a court of five, by not filling its next future vacancy. Instead, the 1802 Act restored the Court's full-strength size to six members by referring to its then-present membership, which had been unchanged since the passage of the 1801 Act. This reaffirmed full-strength size of the Court as consisting of six Justices would not be changed again until the addition of a seventh

seat A seat is a place to sit. The term may encompass additional features, such as back, armrest, head restraint but also headquarters in a wider sense. Types of seat The following are examples of different kinds of seat: * Armchair, a chair ...

by the Seventh Circuit Act of 1807: The Act restructured the circuit courts into six circuits, and assigned one Supreme Court justice to each circuit. Unlike the 1801 Act, no new circuit judgeships were created, so the justices were faced with having to return to the practice of "riding circuit" to hold court in each district within their circuit, along with the local district judge, during the majority of the year. No circuit courts were created for the judicial districts of

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia ...

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 36th-largest by ...

Maine Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and nor ...

, or the territories, although the 1801 Act would have done so. Since the circuit courts were now to consist of only two judges, the Act permitted them to certify to the Supreme Court any question of law on which the two could not agree. Also, the district judge was not permitted to hear appeals of his own decisions, so appeals from the district courts were decided by the circuit justice alone. But the most important part of the Act was the provision that a quorum of only one judge was needed to convene a circuit court. As a result, Supreme Court justices could often rely on district court judges to convene circuit courts. With circuit riding largely optional, Supreme Court justices were no longer saddled with what they had previously felt was a tremendous burden. The Act's flexibility proved crucial to the demise of circuit riding, which essentially disappeared by 1840. The Act also created additional district courts by dividing the

District of North Carolina The Department of Virginia and North Carolina was a United States Military department encompassing Union-occupied territory in the Confederate States during the Civil War. In 1863 it was formed by the merging of two previously existing department ...

into the districts of Albemarle, Cape Fear, and Pamptico, and by dividing the District of Tennessee into the Eastern and Western Districts of Tennessee. No new judgeships were created for these courts; however, the district judges in North Carolina and Tennessee had to hold court in each district within their state, and the North Carolina judge also had to sit on the circuit court (which, however, continued to sit for the state as a whole, not in the separate district court districts). The Act established a United States District Court for the District of Columbia, although this court is not the direct predecessor of today's court bearing the same name. The Act also postponed the dates of the Supreme Court term from the two months of June and December to the month of February of 1803. This effectively cancelled the Supreme Court term for the remainder of 1802.

References

Bruce Ackerman Bruce Arnold Ackerman (born August 19, 1943) is an American constitutional law scholar. He is a Sterling Professor at Yale Law School. In 2010, he was named by '' Foreign Policy'' magazine to its list of top global thinkers. Ackerman was also a ...

, ''The Failure of the Founding Fathers: Jefferson, Marshall, and the Rise of Presidential Democracy'', Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2005. *

Artemus Ward Charles Farrar Browne (April 26, 1834 – March 6, 1867) was an American humor writer, better known under his ''nom de plume'', Artemus Ward, which as a character, an illiterate rube with "Yankee common sense", Browne also played in public perfor ...

, ''Deciding to Leave: The Politics of Retirement from the United States Supreme Court'', New York: SUNY Press, 2003.

See also

References

Further reading