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’ Conclusion3. 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 SlaveryConclusion4. 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 Conclusion5. 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 Conclusion6. 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

Endorsement:Exhaustively researched and admirably argued, this book analyzes the crucial role played by the federal circuit courts in bridging the diversity of the new nation and the need to establish a unified body of national law. It also throws important new light on the internal operation of the Marshall Court. A significant contribution to our understanding of the federal court system of the early republic.