Superior court

“ The judicial power is declared to extend to all cases of the character described, making no distinction between civil and criminal, and the reasons for conferring upon the courts of the national government superior jurisdiction over cases involving authority and rights under the laws of the United States are equally applicable to both. ”

“ Every one connected with these branches of the public service is amenable to the jurisdiction which Congress has created for their government, and, while thus serving, surrenders his right to be tried by the civil courts. All other persons, citizens of states where the courts are open, if charged with crime, are guaranteed the inestimable privilege of trial by jury. ”

“ Will it be said, that the fifty odd thousand citizens in Delaware being associated under a State Government, stand in a rank so superior to the forty odd thousand of Philadelphia, associated under their charter, that although it may become the latter to meet an individual on an equal footing in a Court of Justice, yet that such a procedure would not comport with the dignity of the former?—In this land of equal liberty, shall forty odd thousand in one place be compellable to do justice, and yet fifty odd thousand in another place be privileged to do justice only as they may think proper? ”

“ That the acts and proceedings of these special tribunals need not be according to the course of the common law, but must be according to the exigencies of the state. Such has been the practice from the earliest period of the commonwealth, allowing finally, on appeal or otherwise, a trial by jury, since 1785. 7. That the proceedings of such tribunals, however constituted, are entitled to respect; they are not to be collaterally questioned; and after a length of time, everything is to be presumed in their favor, as in favor of any other tribunal. ”

“ Dependent as its courts are for the enforcement of their judgments upon officers appointed by the executive, and removable at his pleasure, with no patronage and no control of purse or sword, their power and influence rests solely upon the public sense of the necessity for the existence of a tribunal to which all may appeal for the assertion and protection of rights guarantied by the constitution and by the laws of the land, and on the confidence reposed in the soundness of their decisions and the purity of their motives. ”

“ Higley to be the almost uniform rule, among the people who make the common law of England the basis of their jurisprudence, to have a distinct tribunal for the establishment of wills, and the administration of the estates of men dying either with or without wills, which tribunals are variously called 'prerogative courts,' 'probate courts,' 'surrogate courts,' 'orphans' courts,' etc. ”

“ The principle that a State conviction is a bar to a federal prosecution, and that, where there is concurrent jurisdiction, the tribunal first taking jurisdiction afterwards holds that jurisdiction, and exercises it throughout, to the exclusion of all others, necessarily leads to this result. ”

“ To avoid the confusion which would unavoidably result from the contradictory decisions of a number of independent judicatures, all nations have found it necessary to establish one tribunal paramount to the rest, possessing a general superintendence, and authorized to settle and declare in the last resort a uniform rule of civil justice. ”

“ The right of having an appellate tribunal pass upon matters of law in all contests between parties, is regarded in some sort as a sacred right by our people. It is given in the broadest terms by the great Judiciary Act of 1789. ”

“ The power to punish for contempts is inherent in all courts; its existence is essential to the preservation of order in judicial proceedings, and to the enforcement of the judgments, orders, and writs of the courts, and consequently to the due administration of justice. The moment the courts of the United States were called into existence and invested with jurisdiction over any subject, they became possessed of this power. ”

“ Its use has been very much extended in modern times, and now it may be said to be an established remedy to oblige inferior courts and magistrates to do that justice which they are in duty, and by virtue of their office, bound to do. ”

“ At the end of this first year, 1790, Attorney-General Edmund Randolph in a report to Congress urging changes in the Judiciary Act also advocated abolition of this Circuit duty, saying: "Those who pronounce the law of the land without appeal ought to be pre-eminent in most endowments of the mind. Survey the functions of a Judge of the Supreme Court. He must be a master of the common law in all its divisions, a Chancellor, a civilian, a Federal jurist and skilled in the laws of each State. ”

“ There is nothing to restrain use of that privilege as all choices of tribunal are commonly used by all plaintiffs to get away from judges who are considered to be unsympathetic and to get before those who are considered more favorable; to get away from juries thought to be smallminded in the matter of verdicts and to get to those thought to be generous; to escape courts whose procedures are burdensome to the plaintiff and to seek out courts whose procedures make the going easy. ”

“ There is to be one Supreme Court—for chancery, admiralty, common pleas, and exchequer, (which great cases are left in England to four great courts,) to which are added criminal jurisdiction, and all cases depending on the law of nations—a most extensive jurisdiction. This court has more power than any court under heaven. One set of judges ought not to have this power—and judges, particularly, who have temptation always before their eyes. ”

“ Thus it has been ruled, that the only acts to which the power of the courts, by mandamus, extends, are such as are purely ministerial, and with regard to which nothing like judgment or discretion, in the performance of his duties, is left to the officer; but that, wherever the right of judgment or decision exists in him, it is he, and not the courts, who can regulate its exercise. ”

“ The creation of the Court of Cassation and of the three courts of appeal is specifically provided for within the constitution. All inferior tribunals are created by law, and none are permitted to be established otherwise. For the trial of criminal cases there are special tribunals, in three grades: police courts, correctional courts, and courts of assize.
All judges and justices of the peace are appointed by the king for life. ”

“ It also has 'power to issue writs of mandamus, certiorari, prohibition, and habeas corpus, and also all writs necessary or proper to the complete exercise of its appellate jurisdiction.' Id. § 4. The constitution of 1849 provided that the district courts 'shall have original jurisdiction, in law and equity, in all civil cases where the amount in dispute exceeded two hundred dollars, exclusive of interest. In all criminal cases not otherwise provided for, and in all issues of fact joined in the probate courts, their jurisdiction shall be unlimited.' Const. ”

“ Granting that, as has been said, the judge during the term is a living record, and may alter and supply from memory any order, judgment, or decree which has been pronounced, -and this, because he is presumed to retain his own action in his recollection,-yet after the term has elapsed the exercise of such a power to the extent of supplying an order upon which jurisdiction depends, in the absence of any entry, minute, or memorandum to proceed by, or of any statutory provision expressly allowing it, ought not to be conceded in criminal cases. ”

“ It encroaches upon the jurisdiction of the State tribunals.
1st. It takes away the trial by jury.
Nothing can be clearer than that our ancestors attached a high value to the right of trial by jury. But there is a wide difference between an English admiralty judge and one appointed under the Constitution of the United States. The reasons for entertaining a jealousy against the former do not apply to the latter. ”

“ Here a special tribunal has been created for a special purpose. It has been clothed with power to compel the attendance of witnesses, 'and to finally determine the right of each claimant or occupant to purchase' from the United States, under the provisions of the act of congress, the ground he occupies or claims. The duties of the tribunal are judicial in their character, and their decisions evidently intended to be binding on the parties. ”

“ If, then, in both classes of civil cases of which the instance court has jurisdiction, subject-matter in the one class, and locality in the other, ascertains it, neither a jury trial nor the concurrent jurisdiction of the common law courts can be a test for jurisdiction in either class. Crimes, as well those of which the admiralty has jurisdiction as those of which it has not, except in cases of impeachment, the constitution declares shall be tried by a jury. ”

“ At times the valued right of a defendant to have his trial completed by the particular tribunal summoned to sit in judgment on him may be subordinated to the public interest-when there is an imperious necessity to do so. ”

“ All the Chief Justice meant, and what the case has ever after been taken to establish, is that in the territories cases and controversies falling within the enumeration of Article III may be heard and decided in courts constituted without regard to the limitations of that article; [13] courts, that is, having judges of limited tenure and entertaining business beyond the range of conventional cases and controversies. ”

“ But while we find no support to the proposition of the counsel for plaintiffs in error in the special provisions of the statute relied on, it is not to be denied that the argument is much stronger when founded on the general doctrine that when the law has confided to a special tribunal the authority to hear and determine certain matters arising in the course of its duties, the decision of that tribunal, within the scope of its authority, is conclusive upon all others. ”

“ If relief on equitable grounds is to be obtained it is right that it should be sought by a formal suit upon adequate pleadings and should be granted only after a trial of issues according to the usual course of the trial of questions of fact. A court of first instance is the appropriate tribunal, and the only tribunal, equipped for such a trial. Appellate courts have neither the power nor the means to that end. ”

“ If they be, their applicability must be maintained, either in virtue of the 34th section of the Judiciary Act, or in virtue of an original inherent power in the State legislatures, independent of any act of Congress, to control the modes of proceeding in suits depending in the Courts of the United States, and to regulate the conduct of their officers in the service of executions issuing out of those Courts. ”

“ And in all those cases where the general government has jurisdiction in civil questions, the proposed constitution not only makes no provision for trial by jury in the first instance, but, by its appellate jurisdiction, absolutely takes away that inestimable privilege; since it expressly declares the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction both as to law and fact. ”

“ It is none the less the judgment of a judicial tribunal dealing with questions judicial in their nature, and presented in the customary forms of judicial proceedings, because its effect may be to aid an administrative or executive body in the performance of duties legally imposed upon it by congress in execution of a power granted by the constitution. ”

“ It is a doctrine of law too long established to require a citation of authorities, that, where a court has jurisdiction, it has a right to decide every question which occurs in the cause, and whether its decision be correct or otherwise, its judgment, till reversed, is regarded as binding in every other court; and that, where the jurisdiction of a court, and the right of a plaintiff to prosecute his suit in it, have once attached, that right cannot be arrested or taken away by proceedings in another court. ”

“ The jurisdiction of the federal courts-their power to adjudicate-is a grant of authority to them by Congress and thus beyond the scope of litigants to confer. But the locality of a law suit-the place where judicial authority may be exercised-though defined by legislation relates to the convenience of litigants and as such is subject to their disposition. This basic difference between the court's power and the litigant's convenience is historic in the federal courts. ”

“ It is settled that the question of jurisdiction thus to be certified is the jurisdiction of the circuit court as a court of the United States, and not in respect of its general authority as a judicial tribunal. ”

“ A high national court, formed of members of the tribunal of cassation and of high jurors, shall have jurisdiction over the offences of the ministers and principal agents of the executive power, and over crimes which shall assail the general security of the state, when the legislative body shall have rendered a decree of accusation. ”