The Supreme Court is established by Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution of the United States, which says: "The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court . . .". The size of the Court is not specified; the Constitution leaves it to Congress to set the number of justices. Under the Judiciary Act of 1789 Congress originally fixed the number of justices at six (one chief justice and five associate justices).[1] Since 1789 Congress has varied the size of the Court from six to seven, nine, ten, and back to nine justices (always including one chief justice).
When the cases in volume 203 were decided the Court comprised the following eight members (Justice William Henry Moody did not join the Court until after all of the cases in volume 203 had been argued):
Hodges v. United States, 203 U.S. 1 (1906), is a decision by the Supreme Court limiting the power of Congress to make laws under the Thirteenth Amendment. Three white men had been convicted of conspiring against black sawmill workers. The statute that was used to convict the men prohibited conspiracy to deprive American citizens of their constitutional liberties, including the right to make contracts. The Supreme Court overturned the conviction, holding that Congress did not have the right to intervene against racially-motivated interference with labor contracts.
Northwestern Nat. Life Ins. Co. v. Riggs
Northwestern Nat. Life Ins. Co. v. Riggs, 203 U.S. 243 (1906), is a Supreme Court decision dealing with the power of individual states to regulate how corporations may conduct business. The Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment was not a bar to many state laws that effectively limited a corporation's right to contract business, so long as such limits were not unreasonable constraints on trade and due process for resolving conflicts and disputes existed.
United States v. Shipp
In United States v. Shipp, 203 U.S. 563 (1906), the Supreme Court ruled that Tennessee Sheriff Joseph F. Shipp and five others, had "in effect aided and abetted" the lynching of Ed Johnson, despite their knowing that Johnson's appeal of his conviction was pending in the Supreme Court. After trial in the Supreme Court they were held in contempt of court and sentenced to imprisonment. When Shipp was released, he was welcomed back to Tennessee as a hero.[2]
Under the Judiciary Act of 1789 the federal court structure at the time comprised District Courts, which had general trial jurisdiction; Circuit Courts, which had mixed trial and appellate (from the US District Courts) jurisdiction; and the United States Supreme Court, which had appellate jurisdiction over the federal District and Circuit courts—and for certain issues over state courts. The Supreme Court also had limited original jurisdiction (i.e., in which cases could be filed directly with the Supreme Court without first having been heard by a lower federal or state court). There were one or more federal District Courts and/or Circuit Courts in each state, territory, or other geographical region.
The Judiciary Act of 1891 created the United States Courts of Appeals and reassigned the jurisdiction of most routine appeals from the district and circuit courts to these appellate courts. The Act created nine new courts that were originally known as the "United States Circuit Courts of Appeals." The new courts had jurisdiction over most appeals of lower court decisions. The Supreme Court could review either legal issues that a court of appeals certified or decisions of court of appeals by writ of certiorari.
Bluebook citation style is used for case names, citations, and jurisdictions.
