courts to removal by the
President.[123] In McAllister _v._ United States,[124] the removal of a
territorial judge was sustained on the basis of the principle that: "The
whole subject of the organization of territorial courts, the tenure by
which the judges of such courts shall hold their offices, the salary
they receive and the manner in which they may be removed or suspended
from office, was left, by the Constitution, with Congress under its
plenary power over the Territories of the United States."[125] Long
afterwards the Court held in Williams _v._ United States[126] that the
reduction of the salaries of the judges of the Court of Claims, and
inferentially of judges of other legislative courts, to $10,000 per year
by the Appropriation Act of June 30, 1932, was constitutional. In so
doing the Court rejected dicta in earlier cases which classified the
Court of Claims as a constitutional court and silently reversed Miles
_v._ Graham,[127] which had held that Congress could not include the
salary of a judge of the Court of Claims in his taxable income.

Status of the Court of Claims

It follows, too, that in creating legislative courts, Congress can vest
in them nonjudicial functions of a legislative or advisory nature and
deprive their judgments of finality. Thus in Gordon _v._ United
States[128] there was no objection to the power of the Secretary of the
Treasury and Congress to revise or suspend the early judgments of the
Court of Claims. Likewise in United States _v._ Ferreira[129] the Court
sustained the act conferring powers on the Florida territorial court to
examine claims arising under the Spanish treaty and to report his
decisions and the evidence on which they were based to the Secretary of
the Treasury for subsequent action. "A power of this description," it
was said, "may constitutionally be conferred on a Secretary as well as
on a commissioner. But [it] is not judicial in either case, in the sense
in which judicial power is granted by the Constitution to the courts of
the United States."

A Judicial Paradox

Chief Justice Taney's view in the Gordon case that the judgments of
legislative courts could never be reviewed by the Supreme Court was
tacitly rejected in De Groot _v._ United States,[130] when the Court
took jurisdiction from a final judgment of the Court of Claims. Since
the decision of this case in 1867 the authority of the Supreme Court to
exercise appellate jurisdiction over legislative