No Clear Mandate.

When the first Congress met in 1789 to determine the makeup of the new federal court system, they were writing on a blank slate. The Constitution provided no clear expression of how the federal judicial system should be organized. This may have been a natural consequence of the intense focus of the Founding Fathers on the relationship between the new chief magistrate, the president, and the elected representatives of the people in Congress. As James Madison wrote in Federalist, number 37, "no language is so copious as to supply words and phrases for every complex idea." Indeed, Article III does not say much about the judicial power of the United States other than it "shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish."

New Law.

The...