145
FEDERAL COURTS.[1]
Political Importance of the Judiciary in the United States.—Difficulty of treating this Subject.—Utility of judicial Power in Confederations.—What Tribunals could be introduced into the Union.—Necessity of establishing federal Courts of Justice.—Organization of the national Judiciary.—The Supreme Court.—In what it differs from all known Tribunals.
I have inquired into the legislative and executive power of the Union, and the judicial power now remains to be examined; but in this place I cannot conceal my fears from the reader. Judicial institutions exercise a great influence on the condition of the Anglo-Americans, and they occupy a prominent place among what are properly called political institutions: in this respect they are peculiarly deserving of our attention. But I am at a loss to explain the political action of the American tribunals without entering into some technical details on their constitution and their forms of proceeding; and I know not how to descend to these minutiae without wearying the curiosity of the reader by the natural aridity of the subject, or without risking to fall into obscurity through a desire to be succinct. I can scarcely hope to escape these various evils; for if I appear too prolix to a man of the world, a lawyer may on the other hand complain of my brevity. But these are the natural disadvantages of my subject, and more especially of the point which I am about to discuss.
The great difficulty was, not to devise the constitution of the federal government, but to find out a method of enforcing its laws. Governments have in general but two means of overcoming the opposition of the people they govern, viz, the physical force which is at their own disposal, and the moral force which they derive from the decisions of the courts of justice.
A government which should have no other means of exacting obedience than open war, must be very near its ruin; for one of two alternatives would then probably occur: if its authority was
- ↑ See chapter vi., entitled, “Judicial Power in the United States.” This chapter explains the general principles of the American theory of judicial institutions. See also the federal constitution, art. 3. See the Federalist, Nos. 78-83, inclusive: and a work entitled, “Constitutional Law, being a View of the Practice and Jurisdiction of the Courts of the United States,” by Thomas Sergeant. See Story, pp. 134, 162, 489, 511, 581, 668; and the organic law of the 24th September, 1789, in the collection of the laws of the United States, by Story, vol. i., p. 53.
