If the Supreme Court should ever become a political tribunal, it will not be until the Judges shall be settled in Washington, far removed from the People, and within the immediate influence of the power and patronage of the Executive.The subject is the Congressional requirement that the Justices spend part of their time “circuit riding":
Congress came to view circuit riding as serving two related goals: bringing the Court (and, through it, federal law) to the people; and bringing the people to the Court. Circuit riding, at least in the nineteenth century, was intended and perceived as a means of promoting accountability—for the Court and from the Court—at both the local and national level.I wouldn’t go so far as to say we should return to a practice that was in place from basically the first Congress through 1911 (still longer than we’ve been without it), but it reminds us the Congress does have a lot of control over the Justices within the parameters of Article. III.
Just a reminder that the present is never set in the stone of the immutable past.
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