United States Commerce Court
The Commerce Court of the United States was a brief-lived federal trial court. It was created by the Mann-Elkins Act (36 Stat. 539) of June 18, 1910 and abolished a mere three years later, by 38 Stat. 208, effective December 31, 1913. The Commerce Court was a specialized court, given jurisdiction over cases arising from orders of the Interstate Commerce Commission and empowered with judicial review of those orders. The Supreme Court of the United States was given appellate jurisdiction over the Commerce Court.
The Commerce Court also had one of the more unusual structures in United States judicial history. There were five judges serving staggered five-year terms on the Commerce Court. These judges were, nonetheless, Article III judges, and were to be reassigned to an appellate court when their term on the Commerce Court expired. Moreover, even while they served on the Commerce Court, they also served as an at-large appellate judge and could be assigned by the Chief Justice of the United States to any appellate court to help relieve the workload.
Once the court was abolished, the four remaining judges of the court served out their lifetime appointment as at-large appellate judges. (The fifth judge of the court, Robert Wodrow Archbald, had been impeached and removed from office.)
The modern United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, created in 1982, has a purpose similar to the Commerce Court, although the Federal Circuit has broader jurisdiction.
Judges
Only five judges served on the Commerce Court during it's three-year existence.
- Robert Wodrow Archbald
- John Emmett Carland
- William Henry Hunt
- Martin Augustine Knapp
- Julian William Mack
Footnotes
