Colonial Origins of the Idea of a National Judiciary

FAIN: FT-12676-75

Richard Y. Funston
San Diego State University (San Diego, CA 92182-0001)

To examine the institutional and intellectual origins of the idea of a national judiciary. Although the government of the Articles of Confederation included no national judiciary to speak of and the judicial institutions of most of the original 13 states were hardly co-equal with the other branches of government, it has been taken as axiomatic that the separation of powers philosophy included an independent and coordinate judiciary. Modern constitutional scholarship has never directly confronted the question of why, when Edmund Randolph offered a plan in 1787 for an independent, and coordinate, national judiciary, the proposal was readily accepted without debate.