Establishment of the Federal judicial system and the setting of the balance between the Federal and the local judicial branches of power
    With the Judiciary Act of 1789, Congress first implemented the constitutional provision that "the judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." Although subsequent legislation altered many of the 1789 Act's specific provisions, and the 1891 Circuit Courts of Appeals Act effected a major change, the basic design established by the 1789 Act has endured: a supreme appellate court to interpret the federal Constitution and laws; a system of power federal courts, separated geographically by state boundaries and exercising basically the same jurisdiction; and reliance on state courts to handle the bulk of adjudication in the nation. However, Article III and its implementing legislation also reveal the clash of major disagreements over the optimal extent of federal jurisdiction and the optimal federal court structure to accommodate that jurisdiction. .
    The Constitutional Convention's decisions in 1787 about the national government's court system were few but important. The framers agreed that there would be a separate federal judicial power and that to exercise it there would be a Supreme Court and there could be other federal courts. They specified the jurisdiction those courts could exercise, subject to congressional exceptions. They prescribed the appointment procedure for Supreme Court judges, and they sought to protect all federal judges from reprisals for unpopular decisions: Judges' compensation could not be reduced, and judges could not be removed from office other than by legislative impeachment and conviction. Putting flesh on this skeleton fell to the First Congress. The Judiciary Act and the Bill of Rights same forces that contended over the writing and ratification of the Constitution in 1787 and 1788 sparred in the First Congress in 1789 over the nation's judicial system. Federalists generally supported the Constitution and the policies of President Washington's administration, and they wanted to establish a lower federal judiciary. Anti-Federalists opposed the Constitution- or at least wanted significant changes in it- and favored at best only a very limited federal judiciary. After the Constitution went into effect in 1789, outright opposition to it diminished quickly. Democratic Republicans, or "Jeffersonians," emerged as a counter to the Federalists in power. department will be oppressive." The star chamber of British legal history lingered in some people's minds, and many more remembered how state courts issued judgments against debtors during the economic turmoil under the Articles of Confederation. Charles Warren identified four main changes that opponents sought in the Constitution's judiciary provisions: guaranteeing civil as well as criminal trial juries, restricting federal appellate jurisdiction to questions of law, eliminating or radically curtailing congressional authority to establish lower federal courts, and eliminating the authorization for federal diversity jurisdiction. Many who had supported the Constitution, however, believed a federal court system was necessary but doubted the need for a bill of rights. To them, the Constitution, in Hamilton's famous phrase, "is itself, in every rational sense, and to every useful purpose, a bill of rights." The Constitution as ratified contained specific limitations on the national government (e. g., Article III's provision for criminal jury trials), and in a broader sense, it established an energetic national government, extending over a large republic, that would be capable of protecting people from the oppression of local factions. Courts would also protect rights. As Chief Justice John Jay later told the grand juries of the Eastern Circuit, "nothing but a strong government of laws irresistibly bearing down [upon] arbitrary power and licentiousness can defend [liberty] against those two formidable enemies." To many Federalists, state courts under the Articles of Confederation had too easily yielded to popular pressures; the Federalists believed that a separate set of federal courts was necessary to achieve "a strong government of laws.".
    Thus, the First Congress faced these interrelated questions: What provisions should a bill of rights contain? Should Article III's provisions governing federal judicial organization and jurisdiction be altered? How should Article III be implemented? From April to September of 1789, the First Congress addressed them all. Early in the first session of the House of Representatives, James Madison, the principal architect of the Constitution, put together a proposed bill of rights drawn from state proposals and constitutional provisions. Madison had opposed a bill of rights a year earlier, claiming that "parchment barriers" were no protection against "the encroaching spirit of power," but he knew the importance of honoring commitments made in the ratification debates. More over, he told the House, if a bill of rights is incorporated into the Constitution, "independent tribunals of justice will consider themselves in a peculiar manner the guardians of those rights." Madison guided his proposed amendments through legislative revisions and around colleagues who thought they were unnecessary or unwise, and he eluded other legislators who wanted to add provisions to curtail severely the contemplated federal judicial system. Meanwhile, the Senate quickly took up the organization and jurisdiction of the federal courts. The principal drafters of Senate Bill were three lawyers: Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, William Paterson of New Jersey, and Caleb Strong of Massachusetts. Ellsworth and Paterson had served in the Constitutional Convention, and Ellsworth served on the committee of the Continental Congress that heard appeals in prize cases. ............