Federal Courts. On Friday, February 5, the first practitioners before its Bar were admitted as counselors—Elisha Boudinot of New Jersey, Thomas Hartly of Pennsylvania, and Richard Harrison of New York, and Rules of Court were adopted as to the form of writs, and as to the admission of counselors and attorneys.[1] On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, February 8, 9, and 10, the only business transacted was the admission of sixteen further counselors and seven attorneys.[2] Of these nineteen counselors admitted at this first Term, it is interesting to note that two were Senators and nine were Representatives present in New York attending the First Congress ; of the remaining eight non-officials, six were lawyers from New York, and two from New Jersey. Three weeks later, on March 4, 1790, Arthur Lee of Virginia, who had been unable to qualify under the rule and had been admitted by special order of the Court, "took the oaths before the Chief Justice of the United States, requisite to carry into execution the special order of the Supreme Court for admitting him as counselor."[3] Of this first Federal Bar, a contemporary paper said: "Every friend to America must be highly gratified when he peruses the long list of eminent and worthy characters who have come forward as practitioners at the Federal
- ↑ "Ordered that (until further orders) it shall be requisite to the admission of Attorneys or Counsellors to practice in this Court, that they shall have been such for three years past in the Supreme Court of the State to which they respectively belong, and that their private and professional character shall appear to be fair."
- ↑ The counselors were Egbert Benson, John Lawrence, Morgan Lewis, Richard Varick of New York, and Robert Morris of Pennsylvania; Theodore Sedgwick, Fisher Ames and George Thacher of Massachusetts; William Smith of South Carolina; James Jackson of Georgia; Samuel Jones, Ezekiel Gilbert and Cornelius J. Bogert of New York; Abraham Ogden, Elisha Boudinot and William Paterson of New Jersey. The attorneys were William Houston, Edward Livingston, Jacob Morton, Bartholomew de Hart, Jchn Keep, Peter Masterton and William Willcocks, all of New York.
- ↑ New York Daily Advertiser, March 5, 1790; Oazette of the United States, March 6, 1700; Virginia Herald (Fredericksburg), March 18, 1790.
