al on the issue should lie to the Supreme
Court. This twenty-fifth section received the hearty approval of the
champions of State Rights, though later on it came to be to them an
object of fiercest resentment. In the Senate, as in the Convention,
the artillery of these gentlemen was trained upon the proposed inferior
Federal Judiciary, which they pictured as a sort of Gargantua ready at
any moment "to swallow up the state courts."

* Where the national jurisdiction was extended to these in
the interest of providing an impartial tribunal, it was
given to the Circuit Court.

The first nominations for the Supreme Court were sent in by Washington
two days after he had signed the Judiciary Act. As finally constituted,
the original bench consisted of John Jay of New York as Chief
Justice, and of John Rutledge of South Carolina, William Cushing of
Massachusetts, John Blair of Virginia, James Wilson of Pennsylvania, and
James Iredell of North Carolina as Associate Justices. All were known to
be champions of the Constitution, three had been members of the Federal
Convention, four had held high judicial offices in their home States,
and all but Jay were on record as advocates of the principle of judicial
review. Jay was one of the authors of the "Federalist", had achieved a
great diplomatic reputation in the negotiations of 1782, and possessed
the political backing of the powerful Livingston family of New York.

The Judiciary Act provided for two terms of court annually, one
commencing the first Monday of February, and the other on the first
Monday of August. On February 2, 1790, the Court opened its doors for
the first time in an upper room of the Exchange in New York City. Up
to the February term of 1798 it had heard but five cases, and until the
accession of Marshall it had decided but fifty-five. The justices
were largely occupied in what one of them described as their "post-boy
duties," that is, in riding their circuits. At first the justices rode
in pairs and were assigned to particular circuits. As a result of this
practice, the Southern justices were forced each year to make two trips
of nearly two thousand miles each and, in order to hold court for two
weeks, often passed two months on the road. In 1792, however, Congress
changed the law to permit the different circuits to be taken in turn and
by single justices, and in the meantime the Court had, in 1791, followed
the rest of the Government to Philade