IV, Part 2. G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1890.]



CHAPTER XI.

The Federal Judiciary.


In forming the Constitution the framers of our government were
controlled by the principle that the powers which belong to all
governments can be most safely and satisfactorily exercised by dividing
them according to their nature among three separate branches, the
executive, the legislative, and the judicial. Under the Articles of
Confederation this maxim of government had been disregarded. The old
Continental Congress had been given under that plan, not only
legislative powers, but also those executive and judicial powers which
the States had yielded to the central government.

The lack of a Federal judiciary was, as Justice Story says, "one of the
vital defects of the old confederation." Hamilton, the expounder of the
Constitution, said: "Laws are a dead letter without courts to enforce
and apply them."

The reasons why a national system of courts was necessary were in order
that there might be some power:--

1. To give to laws an interpretation that would be uniform throughout
the land. If there were thirteen independent courts, each giving Federal
decisions on the same causes arising under the same national laws, what