sitting in the Circuit Court in Pennsylvania, met the question boldly, and (without filing any further written opinion) entered an order in the ease of an invalid claimant named Hayburn that: "it is considered by the Court that the same be not proceeded upon."[1] Following the decision, they addressed a letter to the President, setting forth "the sentiments which, on a late painful occasion, governed us with regard to an Act passed by the Legislature of the Union." They stated that "it is a principle important to freedom that, in government, the Judicial should be distinct from, and independent of, the Legislative department", and they held that the business directed by the Act was not of a judicial nature. "These, Sir, are the reasons of our conduct. Be assured that, though it became necessary, it was far from being pleasant. To be obliged to act contrary, either to the obvious direction of Congress, or to a constitutional principle, in our judgment equally obvious, excited feelings in us, which we hope never to experience again."[2] This action of the Federal Judges, holding for the first time an Act of Congress to be in conflict with the Constitution, at once became the subject of consideration in Congress. On a memorial presented by Hayburn, April 13, 1792, asking for relief, the following statement was made in the House of Representatives, setting forth more in detail the view of the Judges:[3]
- ↑ See the First Hayburm Case, by Max Farrand, Amer. Hist. Rev. (1907), XIII.
Judge Peters, who also sat in this case, wrote, June 28, 1818, to Charles J. Ingersoll relative to a later pension act: "Having been among the first Judges who resisted the danger of Executive control over the judgments of Courts when the first Invalid Law gave power to the Secretary of War to review such judgments, I am confirmed in the opinions I then held by the circumstances now occurring; tho' I do not now act as a Judge in a Court." Peters Papers MSS. - ↑ For this letter of April 18, 1792, and that of Judge Iredell of June 8, 1702, see 2 Dallas, 410, note; Amer. State Papers, Misc., No. 81.
- ↑ See report in American Daily Advertiser, April 16, 1792; see also 2d Cong., 1st Sess., 566–557.
