Although the U.S. Constitution established the federal judiciary as an independent branch of the federal government, it provided no guidance on how the branch was to be governed or administrated. Congress created federal courts and passed legislation affecting their structure, jurisdiction, and operations. For a century and a half, however, Congress established no centralized judicial administrative body. As a result, each individual court stood apart from the others as its own administrative unit. Congress created the Conference of Senior Circuit Judges (now the Judicial Conference of the United States) in 1922. Although the Conference evolved to become the national policy-making body for the federal courts, its early role was mainly advisory. In 1939, Congress provided the judicial branch with its own centralized administrative body, the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. Until then, Congress placed responsibility for judicial administration with the executive branch, shifting it between various departments.

From 1789 until 1849, the Treasury Department supervised the financial administration of the federal courts. The act establishing the department in September 1789 gave it responsibility for disbursing all appropriated money from the federal treasury and for receipt of all revenues of the United States, thus connecting it to the daily operation of federal courts throughout the nation. Further legislative mandates required all federal officials receiving public money to submit proper accounts. Court officials therefore communicated with the department regarding matters such as salary disbursal, the rental of court space, the construction of courthouses, and the acquisition of furniture and supplies. Congress specifically instructed clerks of the federal courts to submit to the Department of the Treasury, within 30 days of the adjournment of a court session, a list of all judgments and decrees to which the United States was a party, with the monetary amounts awarded for and against the federal government. Until 1849, the courts’ accounts with the Department of the Treasury provided the only central record of the business before the lower courts of the United States.

An 1849 statute created the Department of the Interior, which assumed oversight of the financial administration of the federal courts. Thenceforth, clerks, marshals, and district attorneys submitted to the Department of the Interior all accounts of fees received by their respective courts and all requisitions for the advance or payment of federal money. As Treasury officials had done before, Interior officials corresponded regularly with these individuals about the operations of their courts. The Interior Department closely supervised the financial management of each federal court and enforced spending regulations.

Possessing certain domestic duties as well as overseeing foreign affairs, the Department of State was responsible for several aspects of judicial administration during the first century of its existence. In an act of September 1789, Congress charged the Department of State with responsibility for the great seal of the United States, which was to be affixed to all civil commissions approved by the president. The department issued judicial commissions, which authorized newly appointed judges to assume their offices, and maintained records of the commissions until Congress transferred responsibility for judicial appointments to the Department of Justice in 1888. The early courts also relied on the Department of State to distribute printed compendiums of public statutes. In practice, the secretary of state played the principal role in advising the president on judicial nominations, and did so for several decades. And although the attorney general informally assumed this responsibility beginning in the 1850s, the Department of State maintained the records of judicial nominations throughout the nineteenth century.

In 1870, Congress established the Department of Justice to support the attorney general, and the new department became the principal administrative agency for the federal judiciary. The attorney general assumed the “supervisory powers now exercised by the Secretary of the Interior over the accounts of the district attorneys, marshals, clerks, and other officers of the courts of the United States.” In August 1888, Congress also transferred to the Department of Justice the State Department’s responsibility for issuing commissions for all judicial officers, including judges, marshals, and U.S. attorneys. In addition to supervising the courts’ financial accounts and preparing budget requests, the Department of Justice compiled statistics on the business of the federal courts, procured office supplies, and developed more uniform standards of personnel management. The appropriations for the federal courts were included in the legislation funding the Department of Justice.

Over time, Congress strengthened the Justice Department’s administrative control of the federal courts. In 1906, Congress permitted the attorney general to prescribe rules and regulations governing court clerks’ accounting for and reporting of money received by their courts. After World War I, Congress began to give the department a greater role in appointing and compensating court personnel. In 1919, Congress switched district court clerks and their deputies from the fee system by which they had always been compensated to a salary set by the attorney general. Moreover, the ability of clerks to appoint deputies and other clerical assistants, which had been subject to the approval of the district judge, was now within the attorney general’s purview as well. Clerks of the courts of appeals and their deputies became subject to the salary system in 1922. When Congress created the probation system in 1925, judges were permitted to set the salaries of probation officers, subject to the approval of the attorney general. The officers, although serving the courts, were required to make such reports to the attorney general “as he may at any time require.” The attorney general also set qualification requirements for the appointment of probation officers.

Neither the attorney general nor the Justice Department exercised any direct administrative control over federal judges. From time to time, however, departmental regulations were in tension with norms of judicial independence. On occasion, judges disobeyed departmental regulations regarding matters such as appointment qualifications and fiscal expenditures. The autonomy of those judges left the department with little recourse in enforcing its regulations. Generally, attorneys general steered clear of any actions that would appear to encroach on judicial independence or harm relations between judges and the federal prosecutors who argued cases before them. There were indirect ways that an attorney general could influence the judiciary, however. First, the position entailed a significant role in advising the president on judicial nominations, which often included the nominations of sitting judges to other judicial positions. The most common such scenario was the nomination of a U.S. district court judge to a U.S. court of appeals, but judges of either type could be nominated to the Supreme Court of the United States. Second, the Justice Department was responsible for investigating alleged misconduct by federal judges and making reports to the House of Representatives on whether there was a basis for impeachment. As a result, judges had some incentives to avoid undue friction with the department.

The onset of the Great Depression caused some tension between the Justice Department and the federal judiciary. Attorney General William Mitchell’s 1932 elimination of bailiffs, criers, and messengers as a cost-saving measure was met with letters of complaint from federal judges. Mitchell’s successor, Homer Cummings, ordered a 25% reduction in judicial expenditures for the 1934 fiscal year, and secretaries to retired judges had their salaries cut by half. But not only the Justice Department was applying financial pressure to the courts. The Bureau of the Budget, then in the Treasury Department, objected on fiscal grounds to requests for additional federal judges made by the Justice Department. Congress aroused the judiciary’s ire by cutting the pay of senior judges by 15% in the Independent Offices Appropriation Act of 1933, a provision the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in U.S. v. Booth (1934).

Many judges believed that creating a centralized administrative body within the judiciary could help resolve the tensions between judicial independence and executive oversight of administrative matters. Having their own administrator would enable the courts to approach Congress directly with requests for new judges and increased appropriations, rather than having to go through the executive branch. Some felt that a direct approach would have better results and would accord the judiciary the respect it deserved as a coequal branch of government. Furthermore, detaching judicial administration from the Justice Department would eliminate the potential for the department to impinge on the independence of the courts.

Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes appointed members of the Conference of Senior Circuit Judges to work with American Bar Association representatives and Justice Department officials to draft legislation that would move administration of the courts to the judicial branch, thus improving the courts’ efficiency while respecting the decentralized character of the judicial system. The committee proposed creating the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts to collect information on caseloads, prepare annual budget requests, disburse appropriated funds, and offer administrative assistance to the courts. The proposed act would authorize the Supreme Court to select the director of the Administrative Office, but, at the insistence of Chief Justice Hughes, the office was to operate under the supervision of the Conference of Senior Circuit Judges rather than the Court. The committee proposal found broad support in both the Senate and House of Representatives and became law in August 1939. This development ended a century and a half of executive branch administration of the federal judiciary.

Further Reading:
Fish, Peter Graham. The Politics of Federal Judicial Administration. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973.