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Overview
As administrators, judges become deeply involved in politics, and Peter Graham Fish concentrates on the politics of the national judicial administration. Within this framework he raises enduring issues: Shall local federal judges be wholly independent or must they conform to uniform standards of law and administration? Shall administration be separate and diffused or united and centralized? Shall politics be superior or subordinate to so-called standards of "'efficiency"? Shall the interests of trial judges prevail over or be subordinate to the regional and national interests of appellate judges? How shall money, manpower, jurisdictional, and structural changes be distributed among the courts? To what extent, if any, should judges modify their behavior or institutions to meet external criticism?
Originally published in 1973.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691645964 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 04/19/2016 |
| Series: | Princeton Legacy Library , #1759 |
| Pages: | 552 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.10(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.40(d) |
Read an Excerpt
The Politics of Federal Judicial Administration
By Peter Graham Fish
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1973 Princeton University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-10013-5
CHAPTER 1
Administrative Heritage and Reform, 1789–1922
The Framework
From its inception, the hallmarks of the federal judiciary's administrative system have been independence, decentralization, and individualism. The courts in their judicial decision-making were rendered independent of the executive and legislative branches of government by Article III of the Constitution. That Article's guarantee of tenure during good behavior and undiminished salary while a judge held office reinforced judicial independence and promoted the administrative autonomy of each magistrate.
Congress, however, retained great power over the judicial branch, for it might, in its discretion, "ordain and establish" courts inferior to the Supreme Court. As it turned out, legislative exercise of this power assured the creation of a decentralized system of inferior federal courts reflecting the demands of local constituencies. Local influences would be felt not only in the realm of structure, but also in selection, for the Constitution defined judges of the inferior courts as "superior" officers subject to Senate approval. Such judges were likely to be local residents, approved by the Senate, adjudicating in their own home area, and subject to the continuing influence of their environment.
The autonomy of courts and judges for which the Constitution laid a foundation was further promoted by the Judiciary Act of 1789. The Act itself represented a compromise between anti-nationalists and nationalists in the First Congress. As the Federalists had hoped, it created a court system separate from that of the several states. The measure included, however, important provisions which emphasized decentralizing of state and local administrative and political influences. Established was a judicial structure hierarchically organized in three tiers. At the peak was the court of final review — the Supreme Court of the United States. It alone among federal courts traced its existence to a specific provision of Article III. The first Judiciary Act created two additional tiers of inferior courts. One was composed of circuit courts exercising important original as well as some appellate jurisdiction. The other tier contained district courts which were courts of first instance.
The 1789 Act also divided the country into three circuits: Southern, Middle, and Eastern. The boundaries of each one coincided with the boundaries of the several states which made up each circuit and thus opened the courts to state and sectional influences and practices. Reflecting the territorial expansion of the United States, the number of circuits grew to six in 18024 and to nine in 1866, where it remained until 1893, when Congress created the District of Columbia Circuit. Then, in 1929, the Tenth Circuit was organized, bringing the number of circuits to its present eleven circuits.
For each circuit, there existed a circuit court consisting of two members of the Supreme Court, known as circuit justices, and one of the district judges residing within the circuit. Primary responsibility for the light and often mundane workloads of these courts devolved on the local district judges rather than on the justices from the Supreme Court. As business before the highest tribunal increased during the nineteenth century, the presence of circuit justices became virtually impossible. In 1869 Congress provided each circuit with "a circuit judge, who shall reside in his circuit." He enjoyed the same judicial powers exercised by the circuit-riding Supreme Court justices as well as administrative power to appoint the clerk of his court.
The landmark 1891 Court of Appeals Act retained the old circuit courts, circuit duty for the justices of the Supreme Court, and the existing circuit structure. The measure, however, added circuit judges, laid the groundwork for terminating Supreme Court circuit duties, abolished the appellate jurisdiction of the circuit courts, and established tribunals with clearly-defined intermediate appellate jurisdiction. The old circuit courts, shorn of their appellate jurisdiction, lingered on for another two decades, while the new circuit courts of appeals expanded in size and jurisdiction during the twentieth century.
In addition to the circuit courts, the first Judiciary Act divided the country, then composed of eleven states, into thirteen districts with a court for each district. The boundary of no single district extended beyond that of the state in which it was located. Although Massachusetts and Virginia both received two districts under the 1789 Act, both were contained within each state. Thus the lowest tier of the federal judicial system consisted of thirteen districts, one or more to a state. With a few exceptions, these districts were in turn self-contained within circuits composed of several states. Those states organized into two or more districts always lay wholly within a single circuit: they were never divided among different circuits. The early nineteenth-century system of single districts comprising an entire state and single district judges gradually became transformed into one in which nearly half the states have two or more districts and all district courts except Wyoming, New Hampshire, and Maine have multi-judge tribunals. Thus, from a handful of single-judge district courts in 1789 the number of federal trial courts had soared to eighty-nine in 1969, composed of 327 district judges in regular active service.
From the Act of 1789 and subsequent measures pertaining to the structure of the federal judiciary emerged three important characteristics: independence, decentralization, and individualism. These characteristics were particularly apparent in judicial administration. Here courts in all three tiers enjoyed virtual autonomy. Judges in administrative matters were not only independent of Congress and of the President but of each other as well. Congress, in the words of Felix Frankfurter and James Landis, had "created a hierarchical system of courts, not of judges." No significant supervisory power over judges was lodged in any court. And participation by members of the Supreme Court in the legal work of the lower courts little mitigated the centrifugal thrust built into the judicial institution.
The Circuit Justices
The "circuit riding" required by the Act of 1789 proved highly unpopular with the justices, who were obligated to hold circuit courts in far-flung and almost inaccessible places. Once at their destinations, articulation of national law and assimilation of state and local values, not administrative duties, consumed the time and energy of the judges from Washington. Nevertheless, while on circuit they participated in the adoption of "sundry rules and regulations" for proceedings in the circuit courts, and in the appointment of subordinate circuit court officers. Some degree of communication with the district judges in remote areas was maintained during the terms of the Supreme Court. The Chief Justice, in particular, received information on the state of judicial business in the far-flung districts, commented on the quality of jury charges given by district judges, and interpreted recent Supreme Court decisions for the benefit of uncertain lower court magistrates.
The Chief and his colleagues on the High Court even enjoyed a real capacity for influencing the substance and, to some extent, the administration of district court business within their circuits. "It is only as a Circuit Judge that the Chief Justice or any other Justice of the Supreme Court has, individually, any considerable power," Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase observed in 1868. But the exercise of this power was most pronounced and effective on issues of law arising in the two-judge circuit courts. In administrative matters, it often took the form of advice on convening of the circuit court, how to settle conflicts over the jurisdiction of federal military courts in the post-Civil War South, and the equalization of work among district judges within the circuit.
On occasion, however, the Circuit Justice's tone could become quite admonitory as did that of Justice Samuel Miller, who criticized the work of one district court clerk in a Supreme Court opinion. Chief Justice Chase also played an active role in lower court administration. The former Radical Republican Ohio governor ordered a United States marshal in North Carolina to make no distinctions because of race or color in selecting grand and petit jurors. Even judges were not exempt from supervision, as Circuit Judge Hugh L. Bond learned when Chase notified him to "take up and decide" a case because "under the circumstances, [it] ... as well as the others should, perhaps, be promptly decided." And to another judge, suspected of "leaking" his opinion in advance of decision day, Chase noted that newspaper correspondents seemed to "know as much (and probably more) of your opinions and future decisions as you yourself! I take it for granted that you keep your own counsel."
Judicial patronage as well as administrative and ethical problems led the Chief Justice to intervene in district court administration. Section 3 of the Bankruptcy Act of March 2, 1867 empowered him to nominate and recommend candidates for Registers of Bankruptcy to the district judges who actually appointed them. Chase believed that "the District Judge should have the whole of this business of appointment in his own hands, for he must know much better than the Chief Justice how to select so as to meet all circumstances." But when Judge Bland Ballard of the District of Kentucky denied an appointment to two of the Chiefs old political acquaintances, Chase tactfully suggested that the judge could reconsider his action with "perfect propriety." Less circumspect was the Chiefs response to objections from bench and bar to his candidate for United States Commissioner in Baltimore. Informed that the individual was "totally unfit for the place," he nevertheless demanded the appointment of a loyal Republican in order that there "be equality in numbers if not in value and position."
Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase intervened in lower court administration for reasons closely related to his political attitudes and to the peculiar administrative problems and judicial business of the Fourth Circuit during his circuit justiceship. Neither he nor his predecessor or immediate successors sought or exercised, formally or informally, continuous supervision over the geographically dispersed courts of the United States. Nor was Congress much concerned with creating an administratively integrated federal court system.
Reform, Expansion, and Judicial Autonomy
Relief of the Supreme Court justices from congested dockets and arduous circuit duties and the bringing of federal justice to newly-settled regions of the country constituted the foremost problems in judicial administration during the nineteenth century. In 1790, members of the Supreme Court, aided by those interests favorable to expanded federal jurisdiction, began to labor for creation of an intermediate court of appeals. But efforts to establish a separate intermediate tribunal largely failed until the last decade of the nineteenth century. Then, the court of appeals bill, formally endorsed by the justices of the Supreme Court and supported by the bar became law.
The 1891 Court of Appeals Act laid the foundation for the judicial and administrative ascendency of the appellate courts during the twentieth century. As Leon Green observed, "the early appellate court, made up as it was of a group of trial judges, neither had nor sought a dominant position in the judicial system. From the moment that the appellate courts became a separate organization from trial courts, a silent and probably unconscious struggle for supremacy began...." Green found that by 1930 this appellate judicial supremacy had resulted "not only in complete subordination of trial judges but also of juries." On the administrative side, however, the impact of the 1891 Act became evident more slowly.
Policies relating to district court administration during the nineteenth century involved a quantitative expansion of the system as Congress gradually brought to the people crucial components of federal justice — judges and courthouses. The criteria for locating these components were hit-and-miss. Complained one congressman in 1872: "The first proposition is to establish a new place of holding court; the next is to create a new district with a district judge, marshal, and attorney; the next step is to build a courthouse-post office; and if this system has to go on ... we shall have in the United States as many places of holding courts as there are counties, and instead of having sixty or seventy district judges you will have six or seven hundred."
Once established, each court administratively constituted an independent and autonomous unit. With complete discretion over patronage, the single district judge, who in most cases constituted the full court, appointed everyone from court clerk to bankruptcy receiver. The lines of authority and responsibility in matters of judicial conduct thus radiated no farther than his own court unless "high crimes and misdemeanors" were involved. This autonomy continued into the twentieth century, when President Franklin Roosevelt's Attorney General, Homer Cummings, complained of the absence of a "general administrative officer in the district or outside of it who is responsible for the arrangement of the judicial business, the handling of the docket, or any other matters that would tend to expedite or facilitate the disposition of litigation."
The decentralizing features of the Act of 1789 were everywhere in evidence. Throughout the country appeared a multitude of single-judge district courts which, until the Court of Appeals Act of 1891, disposed of a major share of all litigation in the federal courts. Isolated and sometimes underworked district judges thus stood at the crossroads of the federal judicial system. In an era of limited federal jurisdiction, mastery of the law lay well within their grasp. They became lions on their relatively remote thrones. However they might find or make the law, delay or accelerate the flow of cases, reward or punish friends and foes with patronage and favorable bench rulings, concerned none but themselves. Only appellate court reversals on points of law and impeachment for crimes and misdemeanors limited their conduct.
Psychic security flowing from isolation, real power without checks, and mastery of the then relatively small corpus of federal law provided a source of independence. It also fostered a type of personality not always appreciated by bar, litigants, or even by some sensitive judges. "I have found," wrote one distinguished appellate judge, "fellow judges, especially those who have been on the bench for a long time, to be of the rugged individualistic type." This condition was regrettable, but unavoidable, because "their living and their position is conducive to the development of trends which the same individual probably would not manifest if he were in competitive business."
A Mobile Judiciary
No aspect of the federal judiciary more clearly symbolized its historic administrative system than the immobility of the inferior court judges. For many years the organization of the federal courts was based not only on frozen district boundaries but on frozen judges within those confines as well. Not until 1850 was it possible for a district judge to sit in a district other than his own. Even then the assignment was confined to districts within his own circuit or to those in a contiguous circuit for the sole purpose of assisting a sick or disabled judge.
But this principle of immobility was subject to continuous erosion. In 1907 Congress permitted the Chief Justice to assign a judge from any foreign circuit to aid a circuit encumbered with a disabled judge. As a prerequisite, a certificate of disability issued by the circuit judge of the receiving circuit was required; this he issued only after determining the actual disability of his judge and the impracticability of designating a judge from another district within his own circuit.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Politics of Federal Judicial Administration by Peter Graham Fish. Copyright © 1973 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
- Frontmatter, pg. i
- Contents, pg. vii
- Illustrations, pg. ix
- Preface, pg. xi
- Sources Frequently Cited in the Notes, pg. 1
- 1. Administrative Heritage and Reform, 1789-1922, pg. 3
- 2. The Judicial Conference: Formative Years under Taft and Hughes, pg. 40
- 3. The Justice Department as Judicial Administrator: Problems, Protest, and Reform Proposals, pg. 91
- 5. The Administrative Office of the United States Courts, Part I, pg. 166
- 6. The Administrative Office of the United States Courts, Part II, pg. 200
- 7. The Judicial Conference of the United States, 1939-1969, pg. 228
- 8. The Committee System of the Judicial Conference, pg. 269
- 9. The Judicial Conference and Congress, pg. 301
- 10. Administrative Regionalism and CentraHsm: From Circuit Conferences to the Federal Judicial Center, pg. 340
- 11. The Circuit Councils: Linchpins of Administration, pg. 379
- 12. Politics and Administration: A Dilemma, pg. 427
- Appendix A. Judicial Conference Reports, pg. 438
- Appendix B. Judicial Conference Attendance by Years, pg. 440
- Appendix C. Judicial Conference Attendance by Circuit, pg. 451
- Bibliography, pg. 457
- Index, pg. 499