Judicial bench

“ No law can deprive your honors of your places here during life or good behavior. No President can remove a judge from this bench; and thank God it is so. No law of Congress can remove a judge from this bench. I know there have been laws of Congress that have removed United States judges from lower benches than this, but their validity has been always questioned. But no Congress has ever dared to pass a law to remove a judge from this bench, or to abolish this bench, or change the structure of the Supreme Court of the United States. ”

“ I was now served with a notice, that the writ would be executed at Devizes, at seven o'clock in the evening, on the third day of the sessions, and that counsel would attend. I merely said to the attorney, who served me with the notice, "well! if the Court of King's Bench has so ruled it, so it must be." The sessions arrived; the third day came; and, as I did not appear in the town, it was generally understood, amongst the barristers and attorneys, that there would be no sport, as I should make no attempt to obtain another verdict, in opposition to the opinion of the Court of King's Bench. ”

“ There are masters in the king’s bench division. Unlike the masters in the chancery division, they have original jurisdiction, and are not attached to any particular judge. They hear applications in chambers, act as taxing masters and occasionally as referees to conduct inquiries, take accounts, and assess damages. There is an appeal from the master to the judge in chambers. Formerly there was an appeal from the judge in chambers to a divisional court in every case and thence to the court of appeal, until the multiplication of appeals in small interlocutory matters became a scandal. ”

“ When, therefore, it was conceded on the argument that if the affair at Lathrop had taken place in the court-room during the sitting of the court, the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court would be unquestionable, it is difficult for me to see why the whole question of federal jurisdiction was not embraced in that concession. Assassinating a judge on the bench would no more obstruct and defeat public justice than assassinating him on his way to the bench. In each case he is proceeding in the line of official duty imposed on him by law and his official oath. ”

“ Reference is also made to the power of the Congress to change the procedure in courts of admiralty, a power to which we have alluded in dealing with the function of the deputy commissioner in passing upon the compensation claims of employees. But when fundamental rights are in question, this Court has repeatedly emphasized 'the difference in security of judicial over administrative action.' Ng Fung Ho v. White, supra. Even where issues of fact are tried by juries in the federal courts, such trials are under the constant superintendence of the trial judge. ”

“ The jurisdiction of the court was questioned merely in respect to its general authority as a judicial tribunal, to entertain the summary proceeding against Bien, initiated by the rule to show cause, or its power as a court of equity to entertain the suit of Bowker and afford him equitable relief, and we cannot, therefore, under the clause of the judiciary act above referred to, pass upon the questions asserting a want of jurisdiction in the circuit court. ”

“ State courts equally with federal courts administer justice under the authority and limitations of the Constitution of the United States, the supreme law of the land, binding the judges in every state 'any thing in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.' [16] Thus, whenever a prisoner brings a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the federal courts challenging collaterally a conviction in the state courts and asking release from state custody, serious questions of the relation between the federal and state judicial structures are raised. ”

“ Yet the panel has required all information, exculpatory and incriminatory alike, bearing on the detainee’s status to be deposited with the court and presumptively made available to defense counsel. Why? We can be sure that the assembled information cannot be used in our judicial review of the Tribunal’s status determination. ”

“ Taken literally, such a rationale admits of no limits, and for this reason it cannot function as a legitimate basis for construing the scope of a magistrate's permissible "additional duties." As in Gomez, we must give content to the additional duties clause by looking to Congress' intention that magistrates be delegated administrative and other quasi-judicial tasks in order to free Article III judges to conduct trials, most particularly felony trials. ”

“ The majority contends that magistrate jury selection raises no Article III structural difficulties, because " 'the entire process takes place under the district court's total control and jurisdiction.' " Ante, at 937, quoting Raddatz, supra, 447 U.S., at 681, 100 S.Ct., at 2415. However, as Raddatz and Schor underscore, the requirement of "the district court's total control and jurisdiction" must include the availability of meaningful judicial review of the magistrate's actual rulings at jury selection. ”

“ Will the judges admit men to minister at the bar of justice, whom they would not admit like men among themselves? Will they say that it is unconstitutional to keep such men from the bar by an oath like this, but that it is quite constitutional to keep them from the bench? If a man has a right, without taking this oath, to come here among us, and stand at this bar, and exercise all the functions of an attorney and counsellor in this court because he has a pardon, would not a judge, though guilty confessedly of treason, have a like right to return to the bench;-if he had been pardoned? ”

“ The leaders at the bar therefore seldom consent to go upon the bench unless they have property enough to ensure their comfortable support after they leave it, without returning to the labors of the bar.
This is one of those evils which carry in some sort their own antidote. The lawyers, as a body, are always anxious for their own sake to have an able and independent bench. They do not wish to trust their causes, when they come before a court of last resort for final disposition, to men of inferior capacity and standing. ”

“ When insurrection has swept away the judicial tribunals of a State as well as of the United States, the commanding general in the exercise of the war power had authority to organize a provisional court for the trial of civil as well as of criminal cases. And what if he does call it a Provost Court, provided he show, as he here is alleged by the other side to have done, that the court was meant to be one for the trial of civil causes also? The community must be saved from chaos, and courts are the means by which this end is attained. ”

“ The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behaviour.' Congress must not only ordain and establish inferior courts within a State, and prescribe their jurisdiction, but the judges appointed to administer them must possess the constitutional tenure of office before they can become invested with any portion of the judicial power of the Union. There is no exception to this rule in the Constitution. The Territorial courts, therefore, were not courts in which the judicial power conferred by the Constitution on the Federal government could be deposited. ”

“ Conceding that it was not in the power of the Territorial legislature to confer judicial authority upon any other courts than those authorized by the organic law, and that it was not within its competency to organize county courts for the administration of justice, we cannot doubt the right of the Territorial legislature to associate select men with the judge of probate, and to call the body thus organized, a county court, and to require it to make lists of persons qualified to serve as jurors. ”

“ A State may, of course, distribute the functions of its judicial machinery as it sees fit. The decisions relied upon, however, furnish no reason for selecting the judge rather than the jury to decide this single affirmative defense in the negligence action. They simply reflect a policy, cf. Crowell v. Benson, 285 U.S. 22, 52 S.Ct. 285, 76 L.Ed. 598, that administrative determination of 'jurisdictional facts' should not be final but subject to judicial review. ”

“ The position taken in support of the jurisdiction assumes that the admission of the State, and consequent transfer of all actions and causes of action belonging to the State authorities, had the effect, not only to separate the Federal from the State subjects of jurisdiction, but also to remodel the judicial system of the Territory itself, and adapt its jurisdiction to the trial of Federal causes,-assumptions that need only to be stated to carry with them their refutation. ”

“ We have such a multiplicity of courts that it has become common, and judges are so often chosen for purely political reasons, even for the Supreme Court of the United States, that the lawyer of professional dignity and self-respect hesitates to enter into the competition. Thus the bench tends to be114 filled with duffers, and many of them are also scoundrels, as the frequent complaints against their extortions and tyrannies testify. The English bench, as everyone knows, is immensely better: the fact is often noted with lamentation by American lawyers. ”

“ Each man who sits in the law-court has to have two men to give him advice, one in front of himself, and the other behind him and his Thingmen; then the benches are fully occupied, with forty-eight men on each bench. No man shall sit inside the benches on the space of the law-court except those who have cases; but at other times they can sit there, and the lawman has to dispose of the seats. The people shall sit outside the benches. Only those who have cases ... have the right to rise in the law-court when laws or licenses are considered. ”

“ That Congress may, consistently with the requirements of due process, circumscribe general grants of jurisdiction [1] so as to deny judicial review of administrative action which peremptorily initiates the treatment as an alien of one who had been a citizen seems at least doubtful enough that we should, if reasonably possible, avoid interpreting any statute to accomplish such a result. ”

“ The Commission is not primarily, or in any proper sense, a judicial tribunal. It can render no judgment binding upon the parties, can hold no trial by jury, cannot enforce its awards by process against the person or against property; its awards are merely prima facie evidence, without any conclusive effect, and must be enforced through the aid of the courts of law. It is an administrative body, a branch of the executive department, charged with the duty of aiding in the enforcement of the duties imposed upon the carrier by the act ”

“ The continuance therefore of a judicial officer who bore a commission exclusively military, and who, though a military officer, was by the charter placed above the civil judge, appeared to have many advantages with a view to the maintenance of that due subordination in the settlement upon which its welfare depends." [117]
Bent's proposal to register the Governor's regulations in the courts was opposed as "tending to give but little if any additional publicity ... while it tends to encourage an opinion that the sanction of the court is necessary to give validity to the acts of the Governor". ”

“ And, besides, the acts of Congress that have been passed, in several instances, on the admission of a State, providing for the transfers of the Federal causes to the District Court, as in the case of the admission of Florida, already referred to, and saying nothing at the time in respect to those belonging to State authority, may very well imply an assent to the transfer of them by the State to the appropriate tribunal. Even the omission on the part of Congress to interfere at all in the matter may be subject to a like implication. ”

“ The business of courts, particularly of the federal courts, is drastically unlike the business of factories. The function and role of the federal courts and the nature of their judicial process involve impalpable factors, subtle but far-reaching, which cannot be satisfied by enlarging the judicial plant. ”

“ Necessarily, therefore, not only the criminal causes subsequent to the act of 1899, but the criminal causes saved by it, are covered by its provisions. In other words, the tribunal provided by the act of 1900, whether it is newly created or an existing one continued, has jurisdiction of all the criminal causes embraced by the provisions of the act of March 3, 1899. And it makes no difference that the records and files 'of the old court' are not made records and files 'of the new court.' They must be considered as made, as the means of exercising the jurisdiction conferred. ”

“ It superintends all civil corporations in the kingdom. It commands magistrates and others to do what their duty requires in every case, where there is no other specific remedy. It protects the liberty of the subject by speedy and summary interposition,' &c. It is from this 'high and transcendant' jurisdiction that the court of king's bench derives the power to issue the writ of mandamus, as appears from the same volume of Blackstone's Commentaries, p. ”

“ In Atlas Roofing, supra, 430 U.S., at 458, 97 S.Ct., at 1270, we noted that Congress may effectively supplant a common-law cause of action carrying with it a right to a jury trial with a statutory cause of action shorn of a jury trial right if that statutory cause of action inheres in, or lies against, the Federal Government in its sovereign capacity. Our case law makes plain, however, that the class of "public rights" whose adjudication Congress may assign to administrative agencies or courts of equity sitting without juries is more expansive than Atlas Roofing 's discussion suggests. ”