This volume of the documentary history collection introduces readers to public debates on proposals to alter the organization, jurisdiction, and administration of the federal courts, as well as the tenure and authority of federal judges, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The documents illustrate the contending views of lawyers, judges, legislators, legal scholars, and ordinary citizens on the judiciary’s role in American constitutional government. Documents are drawn from a variety of governmental and nongovernmental sources, including congressional floor debates, testimony in congressional hearings, bar association meetings, public addresses, legal treatises, law reviews, and popular periodicals.