1 and February, 1803 the
Court did not convene.

INFERIOR COURTS MADE AND ABOLISHED

By article I, Sec. 8, paragraph 9, Congress is expressly declared to have
the power to constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court, and the
power is repeated in a different formula in article III, Sec. 1, when
provision is also made for tenure during good behavior and for a
compensation which shall not be diminished. Since 1789 Congress, with
repeated judicial acquiescence and concurrence, has interpreted both of
these sections as leaving it free to establish inferior courts or not,
as it deems fit in the exercise of a boundless discretion. By the
Judiciary Act of 1789, Congress constituted thirteen district courts
which were to have four sessions annually[94] and three circuit courts
which were to consist jointly of the Supreme Court judges and the
district judge of such districts which were to meet annually at the time
and places designated by the statute.[95] By the Judiciary Act of
February 13, 1801, passed in the closing weeks of the Adams
Administration, the number of judges of the Supreme Court was to be
reduced to five after the next vacancy, the districts were reorganized,
and six circuit courts consisting of three judges each and organized
independently of the Supreme Court and the district courts were
created.[96] Whatever merits this plan of organization possessed were
lost in the fierce partisanship of the period, which led the expiring
Federalist Administration to appoint Federalists almost exclusively to
the new judgeships to the dismay of the Jeffersonians who, upon coming
into power, set plans in motion to repeal the act. In a bitter debate
the major constitutional issue to emerge centered about the abolition of
courts once they were created in the light of the provision for tenure
during good behavior. Suffice it to say, the repeal bill was passed and
approved by the President on March 8, 1802[97] without any provision for
the displaced judges. The validity of the act of 1802 was questioned in
Stuart _v._ Laird,[98] where Justice Paterson in a terse opinion, which
hardly touched Charles Lee's argument that Congress lacked power to
abolish or destroy courts and judges, held for the Court that Congress
has the power to establish inferior courts from time to time as it may
think proper and to transfer a cause from one tribunal to another. In
answer to the argument that Supreme Court Justices could not
constitut