The Judiciary Act of 1789 built the federal court system
On this day · 24 September 1789
On September 24, 1789, a single statute conjured the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts out of a one-line constitutional sketch.
The Constitution gave the United States its courts in barely a sentence: there shall be “one supreme Court” and whatever lower courts Congress chooses to create. On September 24, 1789, the First Congress filled in the blueprint by passing the Judiciary Act of 1789, signed that same day by President George Washington.
The act fixed the Supreme Court at a chief justice and five associate justices, and stacked a working judiciary beneath it: district courts in each state and intermediate circuit courts to hear trials and appeals. It also created the Office of Attorney General and a federal marshal and prosecutor for every district.
That scaffolding has proved remarkably durable. The number of justices later grew to nine and circuit-riding faded, but the three-tiered shape drawn in 1789, district, circuit, and supreme, still frames how Americans sue, appeal, and stand trial in federal court today.
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