The Role of Circuit Courts in the Formation of United States Law in the Early Republic

David Lynch is a retired English Circuit Judge, an Honorary Fellow and Visiting Research Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University, and a Master of the Bench of the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple.

1. The Supreme Court Justices and the Circuit Court Experiment
A Team Effort
Why Washington, Livingston, Story, and Thompson?
2. The Federal Circuit Courts: Shaping Local and National Justice for an Emerging Republic
The Politics of Federal Law
The Grand Jury Charge: A Bond between Government and Citizen
The Circuit Court Discourse in the Constitutional Ratification and Senate Debates
The Jurisdiction of the Federal Circuit Courts
‘A Certain Uniformity of Decision in United States Law’
Conclusion
3. Bushrod Washington: The Role of Precedent and the Preservation of Vested Interests
A Federalist’s Journey from Revolutionary Virginia to the Supreme Court
Justice Washington and the Role of Precedent in the Federal Legal System
Property Rights and Commercial Law on Circuit
States’ Rights, the War of 1812, and Slavery
Conclusion
4. Henry Brockholst Livingston: Consolidating Mercantile Law
The Early Years: Political Allegiances: From Federalist to Republican
Commercial Law for New York State
A Republican on a Federalist Supreme Court
Maritime and Commercial Law for the United States
Conclusion
5. Joseph Story: Admiralty Expertise and the Importation of Common Law
A Modernising Influence on Law and Procedure on the First Circuit
Admiralty and the Enforcement of Embargo Laws
Consistency Through the Sharing of Expertise
The Supremacy of Federal Law
The Protection of Minority Groups
Importing Common Law into the Federal Legal System
Conclusion
6. Justice Smith Thompson: Promoting Commerce, State Sovereignty and the Protection of the Cherokee Nation
State Supreme Court: Statutory Interpretation and New York ‘Hard Law’
Contractual Obligations on the Second Circuit and on the Court
‘What is to be Left to the States?’
The Cherokee Nation and the African-American Slave
Conclusion