The Documentary History of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1789-1800

Volume 2 details the workings of the Court's experimental practice of sending Justices around the country to serve as judges at sessions of the various federal circuit courts. The documents in this volume reveal that the justices quickly voiced bitter complaints about the demands of their circuit duties. They also questioned the propriety--and perhaps constitutionality--of assigning the same individuals to act as superior and inferior court judges. The documents in this volume also touch upon topics that figured prominently in the law and politics of the era: neutrality, the boundary between state and federal crimes, the constitutional prohibition against impairing the obligations of contracts, and the relationship between law and morality.