A year of truce between Congress and the Supreme Court had followed the repeal of the Judiciary Act. To prevent Chief-Justice Marshall and his associates from interfering with the new arrangements, Congress in abolishing the circuit courts in 1801 took the strong measure of suspending for more than a year the sessions of the Supreme Court itself. Between December, 1801, and February, 1803, the court was not allowed to sit. Early in February, 1803, a few days before the Supreme Court was to meet, after fourteen months of separation, President Jefferson sent an ominous Message to the House of Representatives.
- "The enclosed letter and affidavits," he said,[1] "exhibiting matter of complaint against John Pickering, district judge of New Hampshire, which is not within executive cognizance, I transmit them to the House of Representatives, to whom the Constitution has confided a power of instituting proceedings of redress if they shall be of opinion that the case calls for them."
The enclosed papers tended to show that Judge Pickering, owing to habits of intoxication or other causes, had become a scandal to the bench, and was unfit to perform his duties. At first sight the House of Representatives might not understand what it had to do with such a matter; but the President's language admitted no doubt of his meaning. The Constitution said that the House of Representatives "shall
- ↑ Message of Feb. 3, 1803; Annals of Congress, 1802-1803, p. 460.
