Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/111

Rh While, as seen above, the decisions of the Federal Circuit Courts in the early years were received in general with approbation, the Circuit Court system itself was regarded from the beginning as decidedly unsatisfactory, both by the Judges themselves, by the litigants and by the general public. The Judges of the Supreme Court strongly objected to the imposition on them of this Circuit duty, and Chief Justice Jay wrote to the President, as early as September, 1790, urging that the provisions of the Judiciary Act with reference to such duty be altered, and contending that it was inconsistent and incompatible for the Supreme Court Judges to sit in both Courts, and that Congress had no constitutional power to impose these functions upon the Judges. 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. To expect that, in future times, this assemblage of talents will be ready, without further study, for the National service is to confide too largely in the public fortune. Most vacancies on the Bench will be supplied by professional men, who, perhaps, have been too much animated by the contentions of the Bar deliberately to explore this extensive range of science. In a great measure, then, the Supreme Judges will form themselves after their nomination. But what leisure remains from their itinerant