hybrid appellate courts Although we have no specific documentary evidence to prove it, it seems likely that politics played a large part in the Supreme Court’s determination to delay a decision on the merits inHayburn’s Case.29 No other explanation makes any sense. The Court, in this early stage of the nation’s existence, probably wanted to spare Congress the embarrassment of having one of its statutes officially declared invalid. The Court, knowing that Congress had been made aware of its views after the Pennsylvania circuit court’s decision not to hear Hayburn’s petition, took the more prudent course of putting off a decision until the legislature had had an opportunity to amend the act. At its next session, Congress obliged and passed a new statute.30 The Pennsylvania circuit court’s exercise of judicial review, acknowledged by Congress and the President, established an important precedent, one that would be followed by future circuit courts. Another episode in early circuit court history, this one the trials for treason of a former vice-president of the United States, Aaron Burr,31 and two of his associates, illustrates how law and politics influenced the role that these courts played. One constitutional scholar called the Burr trial “the greatest criminal trial in American history and one of the notable trials in the annals of law.”32 The status of the people involved in these legal proceedings heightened the interest in them and increased the significance of the results.Not only was a former vice-president being tried for treason, but the President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, had instigated the treason charges, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Marshall, presided over the circuit court trial. ving for a mandamus and how the only decision made inHayburn’s Case was a procedural one, see Marcus, Maeva – Teir, Robert Teir 1988 pp. 527-46. 29 U. S. Reports (2 Dallas), vol. 2, pp. 409-10. 30 The act became law on February 28, 1793, several days after the Supreme Court’s February 1793 term ended, so the Court had refrained from announcing a decision for two terms. U. S. Statutes at Large, vol. 1, p. 324; Minutes of the Supreme Court, February term 1793, in Marcus, Maeva – Perry 1985 pp. 206-217. With the passage of the 1793 act, the constitutionality of the 1792 statute became moot, so the Supreme Court never ruled on the merits inHayburn’s Case. 31 Now remembered primarily for the duel in 1804 in which he killed Alexander Hamilton, a former secretary of the treasury and founding father of the United States. The duel occurred during Burr’s vice-presidential term. 32 Corwin, Edward S., 1919 p. 86 204
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