212 



CONGRESS. (CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS.) 



to relieve the Supreme Court by the creation of 

 a circuit court of appeals. The Senate passed 

 the House bill with amendments, and a conference 

 committee agreed upon a report concurring in 

 the Senate amendments. This report was adopted 

 Feb. 27, 1891. 



In the discussion of it Mr. Rogers, of Arkansas, 

 said : 



" No member upon the floor of the House, I 

 think, has been a more earnest advocate of a re- 

 organization of the Federal judiciary system, 

 and the remuneration of its judges, than 1 have 

 during the past eight years of my congressional 

 life ; so that the observations I shall now make 

 I make from the most friendly standpoint to the 

 object sought to be attained by legislation on 

 this subject. 



" The primary motive, or rather the primary 

 consideration or object of legislation upon this 

 point, was to relieve the Supreme Court of the 

 United States, whose docket is now congested by 

 some seventeen hundred cases, or more, perhaps, 

 than four years of consecutive work if no other 

 business was added to it. I say that was the 

 primary object. Incidental to that object were 

 two other objects. One was the divorcement of 

 the district from the circuit courts and the di- 

 vorcement of the Supreme Court from the infe- 

 rior courts : in other words, that we should have 

 a system rather than a medley ; that the great 

 reservoir of original jurisdiction should rest in 

 the district courts of the United States; that 

 the circuit courts should be abolished and an in- 

 termediate court of appeals established between 

 the district courts and the Supreme Court, whose 

 appellate jurisdiction should be final, and thereby 

 limit the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme 

 Court ajid give it consequent relief. 



" I am sorry to say this conference report de- 

 feats all of these objects; every single one of 

 them. As I said, there are now seventeen hun- 

 dred cases, or somewhere between fifteen and 

 seventeen hundred cases, on the Supreme Court 

 docket. By the terms of this bill every one of 

 these cases will remain on that docket to be 

 finally determined ; and that court will have to 

 do four years of consecutive hard work to get 

 rid of the docket now pending in that court. 



" This is not only true, but here, by the terms 

 of this bill, the congestion of the docket is to be 

 intensified to an extent that no one of us can 

 foresee at this time. By the terms of the fifth 

 section of the bill appeals are granted from 

 the district and circuit courts of the United 

 States in all cases of capital or other infamous 

 crimes. 



" An infamous crime has been decided by the 

 Supreme Court of the United States to be any 

 offense which may be punished by imprison- 

 ment at hard labor in the penitentiary. The ef- 

 fect of this provision of the bill will be to ex- 

 tend the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme 

 Court of the United States over almost the en- 

 tire criminal code of the United States, involv- 

 ing a large number of internal-revenue cases; 

 involving a large number of felonies from the 

 district courts at Fort Smith, Ark., and at Paris, 

 Texas., and other courts exercising exclusive ju- 

 risdiction over certain defined territory of the 

 United States. It likewise will embrace almost 

 all the violations of the postal service. It will 



likewise embrace a very large number of coun- 

 terfeiting cases. 



" From every Federal tribunal in this country 

 these infamous offenses may be taken by writs 

 of error to the Supreme Court of the United 

 States. Therefore, not only is the primary con- 

 sideration for which legislation was sought de- 

 feated, but the evil which was attempted to be 

 remedied is intensified, I think I am safe in say- 

 ing, by at least from three hundred to one thou- 

 sand cases annually which will be carried to the 

 Supreme Court of the United States from this 

 great* domain over which it has never heretofore 

 exercised any appellate jurisdiction. The result 

 will be that, independent of the civil cases which 

 have the right of appeal or writ of error from 

 the district and circuit courts of the United 

 States to the Supreme Court under the terms of 

 the bill, and in which field the number of cases 

 is greatly diminished by the bill, this new crim- 

 inal appellate jurisdiction which is imposed upon 

 the Supreme Court will more than overbalance 

 the number of cases which are cut off by the 

 creation of the intermediate courts of appeal. I 

 think I have made that point clear, or, if I 

 have not, I have been unfortunate. 



"A vice of the present organization of the 

 Federal judicial system is that there are eight 

 circuit judges exercising original jurisdiction, 

 and exclusive jurisdiction almost, over the great 

 domain of civil litigation of all classes and kinds. 

 These eight circuit judges are compelled, in the 

 discharge of their duties, to gallop all over the 

 country, consuming a large proportion of their 

 time in travel. To illustrate, take the eighth 

 circuit, composed of Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, 

 Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, and North and South 

 Dakota, all this vast domain, extending almost 

 from the Gulf to Canada, is now in one circuit 

 presided over by a single circuit judge, and of 

 course his time was very largely absorbed in 

 travel while his duties were discharged by the 

 district judges. 



" Now, our bill sought to abolish the circuit 

 courts as courts of original jurisdiction and 

 thereby get rid of that evil, and confer all orig- 

 inal jurisdiction on the district courts ; then acid 

 one or more circuit judges to each circuit, and 

 organize with these circuit judges one circuit 

 court of appeals with appellate jurisdiction ; but 

 this bill intensifies the evil by assigning two cir- 

 cuit judges to each circuit to do the same kind 

 of service, and gallop all over the country in the 

 old way. To illustrate further the vice of this 

 system, I think I speak within bounds when I say 

 as to the four courts in my own State that no 

 circuit judge or associate justice of the Supreme 

 Court of the United States has ever appeared at 

 any of them but one ; and I think I may safely 

 add that no circuit judge and no associate justice 

 of the Supreme Court ever in his life, at any one 

 time, spent more than two weeks in the State, 

 and sometimes they do not go there for one, 

 two, or three years. The fact is, that the whole 

 circuit-court system as organized now and as 

 proposed by this bill is vicious and a failure. 



" But I now invite your attention to another 

 vice in this system. These nine intermediate 

 appellate courts are organized by this bill, and 

 their first terms are to be held at such times 

 as the court may appoint ; but when these nine 



