courts has turned not
upon the nature or status of such courts, but rather upon the nature of
the proceeding before the lower Court and the finality of its judgment.
Consequently in proceedings before a legislative court which are
judicial in nature and admit of a final judgment the Supreme Court may
be vested with appellate jurisdiction. Thus there arises the workable
anomaly that though the legislative courts can exercise no part of the
judicial power of the United States and the Supreme Court can exercise
only that power, the latter nonetheless can review judgments of the
former. However, it should be emphasized that the Supreme Court will
neither review the administrative proceedings of legislative courts nor
entertain appeals from the advisory or interlocutory decrees of such
courts.[131]

STATUS OF THE COURTS OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Through a long course of decisions the courts of the District of
Columbia were regarded as legislative courts upon which Congress could
impose nonjudicial functions. In Butterworth _v._ United States ex rel.
Hoe,[132] the Court sustained an act of Congress which conferred
revisionary powers upon the Supreme Court of the District in patent
appeals and made its decisions binding only upon the Commissioner of
Patents. Similarly, the Court later sustained the authority of Congress
to vest revisionary powers in the same court over rates fixed by a
public utilities commission.[133] Not long after this the same rule was
applied to the revisionary power of the District Supreme Court over
orders of the Federal Radio Commission.[134] These rulings were based on
the assumption, express or implied, that the courts of the District were
legislative courts, created by Congress in pursuance of its plenary
power to govern the District of Columbia. In an obiter dictum in Ex
parte Bakelite Corporation,[135] while reviewing the history and
analyzing the nature of legislative courts, the Court stated that the
courts of the District were legislative courts.

In 1933, nevertheless, the Court, abandoning all previous dicta on the
subject, found the courts of the District of Columbia to be
constitutional courts exercising judicial power of the United
States,[136] with the result of shouldering the task of reconciling the
performance of nonjudicial functions by such courts with the rule that
constitutional courts can exercise only the judicial power of the United
States. This task was easily accomplis