US Federal Judiciary Structure
The Supreme Court and its functioning
At the apex in the hierarchy is the Supreme Court, its members are formally known as ‘justices’. The number of justices to uphold isn’t explicitly defined in the Constitution, which has been varying over the years. Currently, the number is set to nine, with one Chief Justice and eight associate justices, this set-up followed since 1869 maintaining consistency. Article III also talks about the jurisdiction or functioning of the Supreme Court. Original jurisdiction covers “all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and those in which the State shall be a party.” Appellate jurisdiction refers to all remaining cases, subject to the regulation of the Congress, which apparently still remain questionable due to issues of ‘separation of powers’ and ‘due process’. From about thousands of cases, the Court hears a fraction of those, lesser than 100 and disposes few more without even a formal review being granted. Another important aspect is the power of judicial review, to be discussed in another section. (Mawdsley, 2005)
The most common way of appeal cases reaching the Supreme Court is via a writ of Certiorari, which would be an order to the lower court to deliver their record for review. Now here’s a twist. Even if granted so initially, it can be denied later under legal terms if the facts are found to be not as per constitutional claims or if the legal issues involved are close enough to some other case where certiorari was granted before and also decided upon in the same term. Well, majority of the appeals come to the Supreme Court via the federal circuit courts of appeals, but it will not be surprising to witness instances with appeals pertaining to decisions of special three-judge federal district courts and more importantly, those of state supreme courts. (Mawdsley, 2005)
Federal Circuit Courts of Appeal
The Congress is fully responsible for controlling the existence of the number of the Federal Courts of Appeals, again in accordance with the Article III of the Constitution. Reviewing of the correct method of application of law as performed by the trial courts, in justification with the constitutional framework is the main task of the appellate court. There are thirteen federal appellate courts, each presided over by three judges. The 94 district courts are arranged into 12 regional circuits, each with its own court of appeal. (Mawdsley, 2005) The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit constitutes the 13th one, with its jurisdiction not being restricted to any particular geographical area. It has jurisdiction all over the nation for a variety of subject matters, including “special case appeals, like those involving patent laws, then the U.S Court of International Trade and Federal Claims, as well as those from federal administrative agencies.” As the name suggests, it covers only appellate jurisdiction. A justice is assigned to each of the federal circuits so that during emergency appeals, like cases involving capital punishments an interim order pending a review can be issued. (Mawdsley, 2005)
Federal District Courts
The Congress also gets to decide the number of federal districts to cover each state, and accordingly the number of judges to preside over. Every district court has an exclusive, distinct jurisdiction only within the boundaries of its state. Overall, there are 94 federal districts, each having a particular geographic area under the jurisprudence and it is binding only on the citizens of that district. But states with only one federal district, like Montana and Alaska, the court’s jurisdiction is statewide and binding on all within the state. Even if the district size depends on the population, there exists inequity. (Mawdsley, 2005)
Federal Jurisdiction in brief
Article III also talks about nine categories of “cases” and “controversies”, with first four (cases) having jurisdiction depending on the cause and remaining five (controversies) having jurisdiction depending on the parties. While ‘cases’ involve ambassadors, public ministers, etc, ‘controversies’ would include those matters “to which the United States shall be a party’, between two or more states, those involving citizens of same or different states.” (Mawdsley, 2005)
9 Justices in the Supreme Court
It is interesting to know the story of when and why the number of justices in the Supreme Court of the US was stabilized to nine. It is only since 1869, that this number stopped changing and remain fixed to nine. Now, as mentioned previously, the number of justices is under the control of Congress and not decided by the Constitution. Interestingly, even the office of Chief justice exists simply because there has been a mention of it in the Constitution under the Senate rules section, covering the impeachment procedure of that office. Bringing in the Judiciary Act of 1789, it was George Washington at that time who set the number of judges to six initially. (ROOS, 2020)
Why the number six though? Because earlier, the Supreme Court justices were assigned to sit on federal circuit courts, 13 in number, one for each state. Every circuit court remained under the purview of three judges: one district court judge from that particular state and the remaining two would be Supreme Court justices. Naturally, they had to keep travelling. (ROOS, 2020) To reduce this hassle, the Judiciary Act of 1789 was responsible for dividing the circuit courts intro three divisions- Eastern, Middle and Southern. So now we can see why six, two of them to preside over one region. No intelligent mind at that time thought of the possibility of 3-3 split decision situation. Probably because all the judges would be Federalists, a situation of a disagreement to take place ever didn’t occur to them. Furthermore, one cannot expect all the six judges to be present at the Supreme Court for deciding, due to travel and health circumstances. (ROOS, 2020)
In 1800, when John Adams lost the presidential election to Thomas Jefferson, just a month prior Adams and the Federalists had passed the Judiciary Act of 1801 to reduce the number of Chief Justices from six to five, but Jefferson later repealed the act and brought it back to six officially, so that he gets to nominate a justice. The number changed to nine during the Civil War for covering additional circuit courts’ work in the expanding America. Abraham Lincoln added a 10th justice in 1863, for anti-slavery majority in court, also to undo the wrong of decision in Dredd Scott case of 1857. The number changed to seven and nine again in 1866 and 1868 respectively. (ROOS, 2020)
The turning point was during 1930s, when Franklin D. Roosevelt had his New Deal legislation going on, which also had a bill proposition for allowing him to nominate six more justices, taking the total number to 15 now. As per it, all the sitting judges above the age of 70 would have to resign. If they refused, Roosevelt had the power to nominate additional ones accordingly. This was typically called as Roosevelt’s “packing the court” plan. Now a lot of followed in these years of Great Depression, with his New Deal program and “New Nationalism” speech of 1910. In the end, the packing was done, finally to fix the number at nine, which continues till date. (ROOS, 2020)
