Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 1812

The United States v. Hudson and Goodwin

11 U.S. 32 | 3 L. Ed. 259 | 7 Cranch 32 | 1812 U.S. LEXIS 365

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Takeaway

In short, this case establishes that federal courts cannot create or enforce a general federal common-law criminal jurisdiction; federal crimes and the courts empowered to hear them must be supplied by Congress.

Background

Hudson and Goodwin were indicted in the United States Circuit Court for the District of Connecticut for an allegedly libelous publication directed at the President and Congress. The indictment did not rest on a federal statute creating the offense; it proceeded on the theory that the federal courts could punish common-law crimes.

The circuit court judges divided on whether a federal circuit court possessed that criminal common-law jurisdiction and certified the question to the Supreme Court. The Court treated the issue broadly because its answer would govern not merely libel prosecutions, but every criminal case in which Congress had not affirmatively given federal courts jurisdiction by statute.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether the federal circuit courts may exercise common-law criminal jurisdiction when Congress has not created the offense and assigned jurisdiction by statute.

Holding

No. Federal circuit courts have no general common-law criminal jurisdiction absent a congressional statute making the conduct criminal, prescribing punishment, and conferring jurisdiction on the court.

Reasoning

The federal government is one of delegated powers: it possesses only authority ceded by the states through the Constitution. Federal judicial power is part of that delegation and must be exercised through courts created and structured by Congress. Unlike the Supreme Court's constitutionally derived original jurisdiction, inferior federal courts possess only the jurisdiction Congress gives them.

Congress's authority to create inferior federal courts includes the authority to limit those courts to specified subjects. A circuit court whose statutory jurisdiction is confined to particular matters cannot assume an additional, broad, and indefinite power over common-law crimes—especially where common-law rules varied among the states and supplied no clear line between district-court and circuit-court authority.

The Court did not decide whether the federal government might, in some circumstances, have constitutional authority to enact laws resembling common-law criminal offenses. That question was unnecessary because Congress had not enacted a law making the alleged libel a federal crime, fixing its punishment, and assigning adjudication of the offense to a federal court.

Courts do possess certain inherent powers essential to performing their judicial function, such as punishing contempt, imprisoning for contumacy, and maintaining order in their proceedings. But those necessary institutional powers do not create a general authority to prosecute and punish offenses against the sovereign under the common law. Criminal jurisdiction over such offenses must come from legislation.