Hello and welcome to a history of the United States.

Episode 192, Let's Kill All the United States. Episode 192,

Let's Kill All the Lawyers.

Since the foundation of the United States Constitution, 30 episodes ago,

we spent a lot of time talking about the legislative and executive branches of government,

but we've barely touched on the third branch.

The judiciary.

However, those of you who read ahead will know that the judiciary are going to become increasingly

important over the 19th century, starting with an important decision made during the final days of the

John Adams administration. So, it's about time we back up a bit and talk judges. Judges

were not particularly popular in the colonial era. They were appointed and held office at the pleasure of the crown.

This tended to tie judges to the royal governors and made people view them as political offices.

They also had a lot of discretionary power. There were mixtures of metropolitan law, provincial law, colonial law,

parliamentary law, and common law. These could often contradict, and a judge could rule as they

wished. This was something that Americans wanted to change. So during the American Revolution, the power of judges was

severely weakened. They were elected mostly by the legislatures, who also controlled their wages,

tending to make the judges controlled by the state legislatures. In one extreme example, in 1787, Rhode Island replaced its

state Supreme Court because it disliked a decision taken the previous year. Similarly, they wanted

to use the opportunity of the revolution to simplify common law, the unwritten law which held such sway in England.

This followed reforms taken place in Prussia and Austria. The states began the process in 1776.

However, as with many of the efforts of the critical period,

the revolutionaries soon realized that this wasn't working. The state legislatures, which dominated

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