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Snapshots of Federal Judicial History, 1790-1990
1790 1830 1870 1910 1950 1990
Introduction
This exhibit presents basic information about the federal judiciary at regular intervals in its historical development. While these data do not capture every aspect of the judiciary’s evolution, they highlight several of the most important changes in federal judicial history. Readers can skip to any of the snapshot entries by selecting the relevant year from the banner above. The snapshot entry for each year begins with a chart showing the raw numbers of judges and courts in the federal system in that year. Each snapshot also includes charts and maps pertinent to developments occurring at or around the period in question. The text above each of these visualizations provides explanatory information and historical context. The data presented in these snapshots do not include courts in U.S. territories, except for the U.S. District Court for Puerto Rico, which Congress made an Article III U.S. district court in 1966.
More comprehensive information of the sort presented in this exhibit is available in the Federal Judicial History Office’s demographics, caseloads, and maps features, as well as in the FJC’s publications Debates on the Federal Judiciary: A Documentary History, vols. I-III, Creating the Judicial System, and Federal Judiciary Appropriations, 1792-2010.
1790
The Judiciary at a Glance, 1790 Authorized Article III Judgeships 21 Supreme Court Seats 6 Circuit Courts 13 District Courts 15 Courts of Appeals None Other Federal Courts Territorial courts Adjunct Judges None Judicial Branch Agencies and Governing Bodies None
The Constitution of the United States (drafted in 1787 and ratified in 1789) set the framework for a judicial branch composed of the Supreme Court of the United States and “such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” In the Judiciary Act of 1789, one of the earliest major statutes passed under the new Constitution, the first Congress founded the Supreme Court with a chief justice and five associate justices. Congress also established district and circuit courts. U.S. district courts heard maritime and admiralty cases, as well as some minor criminal and civil matters. The now-defunct U.S. circuit courts heard most major civil and criminal trials and some appeals from the district courts. Initially, the circuit courts did not have dedicated judges of their own; these courts were instead staffed by a combination of district judges and Supreme Court justices "riding circuit." The chart below shows a timeline of these and later-founded federal courts during the period covered by this exhibit.[2]
The 1789 act divided the judicial system into three regional circuits, shown in the map below. North Carolina and Rhode Island were not included in the first circuit system because those states did not ratify the Constitution prior to the legislation’s passage. These two states were added to the judicial system system in 1790 after they joined the union. The modern state of West Virginia is depicted below as its territory was a part of Virginia until 1863. Maine and Kentucky were then part of Massachusetts and Virginia respectively. These future states each had their own district courts under the Judiciary Act of 1789 but were not included in the first circuit system.
Some aspects of the demography of the federal judiciary remained relatively constant until the mid-twentieth century. The best available historical information suggests that all federal judges appointed during the nineteenth century identified as white men, for example. Some other shifts, arguably reflecting broader changes in society and the legal profession, did take take hold at earlier points, however. The average age of federal judges generally increased during the first several decades of the new system of government, for example, with a brief drop caused by a glut of new appointments in 1801 (discussed at greater length in the entry for 1830). The chart below shows this trend.
Under Article III, section 1 of the Constitution, "The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated times, receive for their services, a compensation, which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office." Congress set the salaries for the first tranche of federal judges at $4,000 for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, $3,500 for associate justices, and a range of salaries for district judges according the geographical location of their districts. Salaries remained relatively steady for the first several decades of the judiciary's existence, but increased more rapidly starting in the 1870s. Congress made district judge salaries uniform in 1891. The chart below shows judicial salaries for each year from 1790 until 1891.
1830
The Judiciary at a Glance, 1830 Authorized Article III Judgeships 34 39 Supreme Court Seats 7 Circuit Courts 20 District Courts 33 Courts of Appeals None Other Federal Courts Territorial courts Adjunct Judges None Judicial Branch Agencies and Governing Bodies None
By 1830, the structure of the judiciary had undergone its first major revision, though some aspects of that transformation had already proved transitory. In 1801, Congress passed a new judiciary act that radically altered the system it had created twelve years earlier. Scholars differ on the degree to which these changes were prompted by ideological concerns or political opportunism, though both appear to have played at least some part. A Federalist-dominated lame duck Congress passed the act, which gave outgoing Federalist President John Adams the opportunity to appoint several new judges. By the same token, many of the other changes wrought by the bill, such as the abolition of circuit riding, reflected critiques of the judicial system that had been present since its founding. (See Spotlight on Federal Judicial History: The Midnight Judges). The 1801 act authorized the appointment of a cohort of circuit judges assigned to each of six numerically titled regional circuit courts. A separate law, also passed in early 1801, created a circuit court for the newly formed District of Columbia and authorized the judges of that court to hold a district court for the District of Potomac, which also included parts of Virginia and Maryland.
Just a year after the passage of the 1801 Act, Congress repealed the legislation, disbanding the regional circuit courts and removing thirteen circuit judges from office. Prevailing wisdom at the time held that Article III tenure terminated with the abolition of the court; since 1863, however, no Article III judges have lost their tenure through court abolition. The chart below shows the termination of Article III judicial tenures from 1790 to 1830.
A few months after repealing the Judiciary Act of 1801, Congress passed a new law that retained the numbered circuit system from the 1801 act but restored the district-based circuit courts and the use of district judges and Supreme Court justices riding circuit to hold circuit courts. The District of Columbia kept its circuit judges (although the judicial district of Potomac was replaced by a district court for the District of Columbia presided over by the circuit judges). Aside from occasional additions of new states and circuits, this system remained largely unaltered for several decades. From this point until the passage of the Judicial Circuits Act of 1866, Congress matched the number of Supreme Court seats and judicial circuits (the Court initially had two justices for each of the Eastern, Middle and Southern Circuits). By convention, presidents nominated justices with geographical ties to the circuits corresponding to vacant seats, though this was only a legal requirement for the justice appointed to fill the new seat created by the founding of the Seventh Circuit in 1807. Congress did not add to the circuit system again until 1837. The map below shows the circuit system as it stood in 1830.
The growth of the federal system generally led to higher expenditures. As the chart below shows, congressional appropriations for the judiciary generally remained steady throughout the early decades of the judiciary's existence. Beginning in the 1820s, however, this number generally increased.
1870
The Judiciary at a Glance, 1870 Authorized Article III Judgeships 74 80 Supreme Court Seats 9 Circuit Courts 51 District Courts 57 Courts of Appeals None Other Federal Courts Territorial courts; Court of Claims; Mixed Slave Trade Courts Adjunct Judges None Judicial Branch Agencies and Governing Bodies None
The judicial system looked significantly different in 1870 than it had in 1830, a reflection of the convulsive changes to the national government brought on by the Civil War. In perhaps the most significant pre-war reform, Congress modified the circuit system in 1837, creating the Eighth and Ninth circuits and adding corresponding seats to the Supreme Court. Other than the addition of a circuit for far-flung California from 1855 to 1863, however, antebellum lawmakers mostly left the judicial system unchanged. Most historians attribute this stasis to a desire to avoid embroiling the judicial system in burgeoning sectional tensions over slavery. Perhaps paradoxically, however, the result of this inaction was that the slave South accounted for a majority of federal circuits even though the majority of the nation’s population lived on free soil. As the number of Supreme Court seats generally tracked the number of circuits, this also meant that southerners comprised a Supreme Court majority until 1863 (even though, by that time, approximately two thirds of the nation lived in the North). By contrast, a series of changes to this system during and immediately after the war changed the number and location of circuits several times. The map below shows the result of these transformations by 1870.
The Civil War precipitated significant changes in judicial personnel, as well. Several federal judges resigned their positions at or near the start of the war to join the Confederate cause. Judge Andrew Magrath of the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, for instance, was among the earliest federal officeholders to formally defect. He later became a judge in the Confederate court system and eventually the state's Confederate governor. Justice John Archibald Campbell was the only Supreme Court justice to join the Confederacy. Some federal judges in southern states remained loyal to the United States, though several were unable to hold court until after the cessation of hostilities in 1865. The chart below shows the terminations of Article III judicial tenures from 1831 to 1870.
The years preceding 1870 also saw an increase in the judiciary's size. In 1863, rightly anticipating a growing number of claims against the government brought on by the Civil War, Congress expanded the Court of Claims, which Congress had created in 1855 as the first national special-jurisdiction court. And in 1869, Congress created dedicated judgeships for all the nation's circuit courts, easing the demands on Supreme Court justices riding circuit and district judges who often had to hear both district and circuit court proceedings. As the chart below shows, the number of authorized Article III judicial positions more than doubled between 1831 and 1870 as a result of these changes and the admission of new states.
As the chart below shows, congressional appropriations generally increased gradually between 1831 and 1871, with costs dropping somewhat during the final years of the Civil War and the first years of Reconstruction, during which many federal courts in the South ceased some of their regular operations due to a state of martial law.
The power of the federal government generally grew during the Civil War, though the peacetime government remained threadbare by modern comparisons. U.S. district courts were among the most important and widespread federal entities in postwar America. The map below shows the statutorily authorized district-court meeting places across the nation as of 1870. Where available, patrons can select individual meeting places to view information and images of the courthouses present in these meeting places in that year.
1910
The Judiciary at a Glance, 1910 Authorized Article III Judgeships 179 153 Supreme Court Seats 9 Circuit Courts 78 District Courts 78 Courts of Appeals 10 Other Federal Courts Territorial courts; Court of Claims; Commerce Court; U.S. Court for China; U.S Court of Customs Appeals Adjunct Judges None Judicial Branch Agencies and Governing Bodies None
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries represented a time of significant institutional reform for the federal courts. Perhaps the most significant of these reforms, the Evarts Act of 1891, created a new species of federal court, the U.S. courts of appeals. Staffed by U.S. circuit judges, who held concurrent circuit and courts of appeals commissions from 1891 through 1911, these courts became the primary recourse for parties appealing from federal trial courts. The maps below show the circuit system as it stood in 1910 and the meeting places of the new courts of appeals at that point.
The creation of the courts of appeals reflected the resolution of decades of debate over the increasing caseload of the Supreme Court. Although the availability of criminal appeals was quite narrow in the nineteenth-century federal judicial system, early statutory schemes had provided for appeal as of right to the Supreme Court in a broad range of other legal matters. With no intermediate courts and little ability to select the appeals they heard, the justices had to adjudicate a far greater number of appeals than the modern-day Court hears, with the result that appeals to the Supreme Court suffered from significant delays. The courts of appeals were designed in part to alleviate this backlog and facilitate appellate review in a broad range of cases. The chart below shows Supreme Court caseloads during this period.
As the chart below illustrates, judiciary appropriations generally increased more rapidly between 1871 and 1910 than they had in previous decades. This trend was likely caused in part by the growth of the judiciary (the number of authorized Article III judgeships more than doubled again during the period, for example) as well as the expanded use of purpose-built federal courthouse buildings.
1950
The Judiciary at a Glance, 1950 Authorized Article III Judgeship 305 342 Supreme Court Seats 9 Circuit Courts None District Courts 85 Courts of Appeals 11 Other Federal Courts Territorial courts; Court of Claims; Emergency Court of Appeals; U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals; U.S. Customs Court Adjunct Judges None Judicial Branch Agencies and Governing Bodies Judicial Conference of the United States; Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts
By 1950, the federal judiciary had assumed most of the contours of its modern form. In 1911, Congress passed a new Judiciary Act which abolished the circuit courts effective January 1 of the following year. From that point on, the district courts served as the primary trial courts in the federal system, with the courts of appeals hearing most appeals from district courts in their geographical circuits.
The period between 1911 and 1950 was a critical one for judicial governance and administration. In 1922, Congress created the Conference of Senior Circuit Judges. This organization was chaired by the Chief Justice of the United States and included the senior judges (now known as the chief judges) of each U.S. court of appeals. This body began as an advisory group to Congress, but gradually evolved into a governing body for the court system. Congress changed its name to the Judicial Conference of the United States in 1948 and added district judges to the organization in 1957, bankruptcy judges in 1984, and the chief judge of the U.S. Court of International Trade in 1986.
For the first 150 years of the judiciary's existence, its operations were largely administered by executive agencies. At various points, the departments of State, Treasury, Justice and Interior all superintended important aspects of the courts' day-to-day operations. In 1939, however, Congress created the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts as an independent agency within the judicial branch to assume many of these duties. In the decades that followed, Congress added additional agencies within the judicial branch to assist with the courts' operations. The chart below shows a timespan of each of these agencies up to 1990.
In 1919, Congress created the status of senior judge. This status enabled U.S. district and courts of appeals judges to retire from active judicial service, but continue to hear either a full or reduced caseload once they met certain age and length-of-service milestones. Congress extended a similar status to Supreme Court justices in 1937, although justices who have retired from active service are known as "retired," rather than "senior," justices and may not hear cases at the Supreme Court level. In the years since the advent of the senior judge system, many judges have chosen to take senior status rather than retiring entirely from the judiciary. (See Spotlight: The Evolution of Judicial Retirement). The chart below shows the number of senior Article III judges serving from 1919 to 1990.
In 1926, Congress converted the Board of General Appraisers into the U.S. Customs Court. And in 1929, Congress reestablished the Tenth Circuit (the circuit had briefly existed from 1863 to 1866). The revived circuit encompassed the states of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Kansas, which had previously been part of the Eighth Circuit. The map below shows the circuit system as of 1950.
The national prohibition on alcohol from 1920 to 1933 led to a rapid growth in the number of federal criminal cases during that period and the years immediately following the repeal of prohibition by the Twenty-First Amendment. Prosecutions generally fell starting in the mid-nineteen thirties. The chart below reflects these trends.
As the chart below shows, judiciary appropriations loosely tracked caseload trends, with a significant increase during prohibition followed by a decrease shortly after the ratification of the twenty-first amendment.
1990
The Judiciary at a Glance, 1990 Authorized Judgeships 842 1,054 Supreme Court Seats 9 Circuit Courts None District Courts 91 Courts of Appeals 13 Other Federal Courts Territorial courts; Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and Court of Review; Special Railroad Court; Temporary Emergency Court of Appeals; U.S. Bankruptcy Courts; U.S. Claims Court; U.S. Court of International Trade; U.S. Tax Court; U.S. Court for Berlin; U.S. Court of Veterans Appeals Adjunct Judges U.S. Bankruptcy Judges; U.S. Magistrate Judges Judicial Branch Agencies and Governing Bodies Judicial Conference of the United States; Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts; Federal Judicial Center; U.S. Judicial Panel on Multi-District Litigation; U.S. Sentencing Commission
The period between 1950 and 1990 was one of relative stability for the structure of the federal judiciary. Notable changes that did occur included the creation of the Federal Judicial Center in 1967, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation in 1968, and the U.S. Sentencing Commission in 1984. Each of these bodies was created as an independent agency within the judicial branch.
With no new states added to the union after 1959, Congress made relatively few changes to the geographical circuit system during this period. In the last such change to date, Congress split the Fifth Circuit in 1980, moving several of that circuit’s former states into the newly created Eleventh Circuit. In the same year, the jurisdiction of U.S. Customs Court passed to the newly formed Court of International Trade. In 1982, Congress created the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to assume the appellate jurisdiction of the Court of Claims and the U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, both of which it supplanted. The trial division of the Court of Claims became the U.S. Claims Court (now known as the U.S. Court of Federal Claims).
Perhaps the most important change to the federal courts' operations during this period came in the form of the creation of two new judicial roles: magistrate and bankruptcy judges. In 1968, Congress created the role of magistrate to replace commissioners, who had served U.S. district courts since the judiciary's inception. Magistrates were judicial officers appointed by the courts for fixed terms, and who exercised a broad range of judicial functions assigned to them by either statute or court order. In 1990, Congress renamed this role to its current moniker, magistrate judge. (See Magistrate Judgeships).
Though federal courts had long dealt with bankruptcy issues, the role of bankruptcy judges developed gradually over the course of the twentieth century. Referees in bankruptcy initially dealt primarily with administrative issues, but slowly assumed more of a judicial role. In 1973, the Supreme Court issued rules recognizing this transformation and adopting the style "bankruptcy judge" for the first time. A 1978 act of Congress formalized this status by creating bankruptcy judgeships to be filled for a term of fourteen years by presidentially appointed judges who would serve in separate bankruptcy courts. These judgeships were to be filled by erstwhile referees on an interim basis until 1984, when the courts would fully commence operations under the new statutory scheme.
The Supreme Court struck down elements of the 1978 law in Northern Pipeline Construction Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co. (1982) on the ground that Congress had violated the Constitution by giving Article III judicial powers to bankruptcy courts independent of the Article III judiciary. In 1984, Congress responded by revising the bankruptcy court system such that the courts of appeals were responsible for the appointment of bankruptcy judges and the district courts retained important elements of jurisdiction over bankruptcy law, with bankruptcy courts serving as distinct tribunals operating as adjuncts to Article III courts. (See Bankruptcy Judgeships).
Many of the changes to the bankruptcy adjudication system were designed to deal with significant increases in the number of bankruptcy filings in the second half of the twentieth century. The chart below shows this trend.
A similar, if perhaps less pronounced, trend took hold in non-bankruptcy civil litigation in the federal courts. Starting in the 1940s, and increasing in the decades following thereafter, the number of civil cases filed in U.S. district courts generally grew relative to the number of criminal prosecutions. The chart below illustrates this shift.
As the chart below shows, congressional appropriations for the judiciary increased significantly between 1951 and 1990. By the latter year, the branch's total appropriation was over $1.6 billion.
As the chart below shows, the increase in judicial appropriations broadly tracked the increased number of cases filed in U.S. district and bankruptcy courts and the increasing number of federal judges during this period (the chart below shows the number of Article III judges serving in the judiciary from 1951 to 1990). Appropriations in the twentieth century also likely reflect the impact of economic inflation, which generally had a nugatory effect for most of the nineteenth century.
While the Constitution protects Article III judges' independence by forbidding Congress from reducing their salary, it is silent on the issue of salary increases. Judges were thus generally dependent on ad hoc raises in the form of congressional legislation. In 1967, Congress attempted to regularize pay increases for judges and other senior federal officeholders by passing the Federal Salary Act. This law created a quadrennial commission with members appointed by all three branches of government to make recommendations for raises for high-ranking officials and judges to the President of the United States. The president, in turn, was to use these recommendations to form a final recommendation to Congress, which had the authority to modify or deny the request. Should Congress take no action, the pay changes were to go into effect as requested by the president. The judicial salaries set using this scheme are reflected in the chart below, which also shows data stretching to back to 1891, when district court salaries became uniform.[3]
For much of its history, the federal judiciary was relatively homogenous in demographic terms. Genevieve Cline, who joined the U.S. Customs Court in 1928, was the first woman to hold an Article III judicial post. Florence Allen became the first female federal appellate judge when she was appointed to the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in 1934. Irvin Mollison became the first nonwhite Article III judge in 1945 when he joined the U.S. Customs Court. He remained the only Article III judge of color until William Hastie joined the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in 1950. After that time, the number of female and nonwhite judges increased slowly until the late 1970s, with a general trend towards more rapid growth thereafter. The charts below show the number of Article III judges by gender and race from 1951 to 1990. (See Diversity on the Bench).
[1]The "Serving Article III Judges" measure reflects the total number of judges serving at any point during the year in question. This number sometimes exceeds the total number of authorized judgeships because it includes both judges' whose service has ended and those who have succeeded them where both served within the same year. The figures for 1950 and 1990 include both active and senior judges. The assumption of senior status creates a vacancy on the court, which is typically filled by the appointment of a new judge, such that two or more judges appointed to the same seat may be counted as "Serving Article III Judges" in the same year.
[2] Some of these tribunals were "Article I" courts created by Congress under the aegis of its legislative powers, rather than its Article III authority to create inferior courts, and staffed by judges who were not subject to the nomination, tenure, and salary provisions of Article III. The earliest of these were temporary courts established for federal territories, but subsequent Article I courts dealt with specialized issues such as tax law. For further information on these courts, please visit the FJC's Other Federal Courts page.
[3]Non-Article III judges are not subject to the diminution-of-salary provisions of Article III. In some instances, Congress set the salary for judges by reference to other judicial posts. Since 1988, for instance, U.S. magistrate judges have received a salary equal to 92% of that of a district judge. This chart computes such salaries where possible, though magistrate salaries from 1968 to 1972, magistrate salaries were subject to a determination by the Judicial Conference of the United States based on the number and nature of cases magistrates heard. These Conference-set salaries are not included in this chart. Rather, the statutory maximum of possible salaries is provided for ease of reference. From October 1976 to November 1978, magistrate salaries were not to exceed those of bankruptcy referees. The figures provided in the chart for those years reflect the statutory maximum salaries for referees. For further information, please see the FJC’s page on the history of judicial salaries.