The Judiciary Act of 1891 ({{USStat, 26, 826), also known as the Evarts Act after its primary sponsor, Senator

William M. Evarts William Maxwell Evarts (February 6, 1818February 28, 1901) was an American lawyer and statesman from New York who served as U.S. Secretary of State, U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Senator from New York. He was renowned for his skills as a litig ...

, created the

United States courts of appeals The United States courts of appeals are the intermediate appellate courts of the United States federal judiciary. The courts of appeals are divided into 11 numbered circuits that cover geographic areas of the United States and hear appeals f ...

and reassigned the jurisdiction of most routine appeals from the

district A district is a type of administrative division that, in some countries, is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivision ...

and circuit courts to these appellate courts. Therefore, it is also called the Circuit Courts of Appeals Act. The Act created nine new courts that were originally known as the "United States circuit courts of appeals;" the name was changed to its current form in 1948. Each court was composed of two circuit judges and one district judge. The new courts had jurisdiction over most appeals of lower court decisions. 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 ...

could review either legal issues that a court of appeals certified or decisions of court of appeals by

writ of certiorari In law, ''certiorari'' is a court process to seek judicial review of a decision of a lower court or government agency. ''Certiorari'' comes from the name of an English prerogative writ, issued by a superior court to direct that the record of ...

. The change resulted in an immediate reduction in the Supreme Court's workload (from 623 cases filed in 1890 to 379 in 1891 and 275 in 1892). The Act also eliminated the requirement of "

circuit riding In the United States, circuit riding was the practice of a judge, sometimes referred to as a circuit rider, traveling to a judicial district (referred to as a circuit) to preside over court cases there. A defining feature of American federal cour ...

" by Supreme Court justices under which the justices sat as trial judges on the U.S. circuit courts. The circuit courts themselves remained in existence, although without their former appellate jurisdiction, until they were abolished and their trial jurisdiction transferred to the district courts by the

Judicial Code of 1911 The Judicial Code of 1911 () abolished the United States circuit courts and transferred their trial jurisdiction to the U.S. district courts. In 1911, the United States Congress created a single code encompassing all statutes related to the judici ...

. The Act allowed certain types of cases to be appealed directly to the Supreme Court (bypassing the new circuit courts of appeals), such as convictions for

capital crimes Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...

; cases involving the construction or application of the

United States Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the natio ...

; or cases in which a federal law or treaty or a state constitution or law was alleged to violate the U.S. Constitution.

External links

Judiciary Act of 1891
statute text

''Landmark Judicial Legislation'' at the

Federal Judicial Center The Federal Judicial Center is the education and research agency of the United States federal courts. It was established by in 1967, at the recommendation of the Judicial Conference of the United States. According to , the main areas of respo ...

1891 in American law

1891 Events January–March * January 1 ** Paying of old age pensions begins in Germany. ** A strike of 500 Hungarian steel workers occurs; 3,000 men are out of work as a consequence. ** Germany takes formal possession of its new Af ...

History of the Supreme Court of the United States

See also

External links