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 amendments to Article III drawn up by New York congressman Egbert Benson. Among the proposed reforms in Randolph’s and Benson’s plans were ending circuit riding, creating circuit judgeships, and vesting the inferior federal courts with jurisdiction to hear all cases arising under federal law. Neither plan gained sufficient support to bring about change. Yet reform of the federal courts was a constant topic of political debate in the early years of the Republic.

Throughout the 1790s, Congress continued to debate reform of the federal judiciary, with much criticism focusing on the Justices’ circuit-riding duties. In his annual message to Congress in 1799, President John Adams urged members to begin “a revision and amendment of the judiciary system,” which he argued was “indispensably necessary” to “give due effect to the civil administration of Government and to insure a just execution of the laws.”

In February 1800, a House committee met with Justices William Paterson and Bushrod Washington to solicit their recommendations for reform. The following month, Congressman Robert Goodloe Harper of South Carolina introduced a draft bill recommending substantial reforms to the federal judiciary. The bill expanded the jurisdiction of the inferior federal courts to include all cases arising under federal law, increased the number of districts and circuits, and created sixteen new circuit judgeships, thereby ending the Justices’ circuit-riding duties. The bill reduced the number of Supreme Court Justices from six to five upon the next vacancy, likely to limit the ability of a future President who was not Adams to shape the Court. It also added a new, sixth circuit, comprising Tennessee, Kentucky, and the Indiana and Ohio territories. Following debate and minor modifications, the bill passed the House on January 20 and the Senate on February 7, 1801, and was signed into law by Adams on February 13, 1801. Officially titled “An Act to Provide for the More Convenient Organization of the Courts of the United States,” the Act became known as the Judiciary Act of 1801.

The Judiciary Act of 1801 is sometimes assumed to have been entirely motivated by Thomas Jefferson’s victory in the presidential election of 1800. Four days after the 1801 Act was passed, on February 17, 1801, the House settled the disputed contest by electing Jefferson on the thirty-sixth ballot. Jefferson’s Republican Party swept into power in Congress as well. But reforms to the federal judiciary, including ending circuit riding and expanding the courts’ jurisdiction, had been debated since the 1790s, and the movement that led to the 1801 Act predated the election by several months.