History Recognition of
the Need for
Federal Marshals The Authors of
the Judiciary
Act of 1789 (cont.) Since the first 23 sections of the bill
were clearly the most controversial, Ellsworth and Paterson probably
continued to work on them up to the last minute before the bill was
introduced in the Senate on June 12. The remaining sections were
probably written early enough to be handed over to one of
the clerks for transcription into the formal script of the day. A
preponderance of the evidence, however, points to Ellsworth as the
principal author of the bill. The comments of his contemporaries in the
Senate, as well as the conclusions of later historians, attribute him
with most of the work of authorship.
Maclay, for example, noted in his
journal that the bill was a "children of Ellsworth's, 'and he defends it
with the care of a parent, even with wrath and anger." Senator Paine
Wingate of New Hampshire, who was on the Special Judiciary Committee,
called Ellsworth "the leading projector" of the Bill. And Charles
Warren. who wrote the definitive legislative history of the Act.
concluded that Ellsworth was the main author.
Ellsworth was horn in Windsor. Connecticut, on April 29, 1745, and
died in the same town on November 26. 1807. His was a long and
illustrious career, intimately entwined with the formation of' the new
nation. He attended Yale for two years before transferring to the
College of New Jersey (which later changed its name to Princeton, where
he graduated in 1766 with a Master of Arts degree. For the next several
years, Ellsworth read the law before being admitted to the Connecticut
bar in 1771. Six years later, he was elected to the Continental
Congress, serving throughout the Revolutionary War until 1783. In 1784,
he sat on the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors, moving at the end of
the year to the Connecticut Superior Court. As a delegate to the
constitutional Convention in 1787, he helped formulate the
'Connecticut Compromise," which gave to each state equal representation
in the Senate. It was during the Convention that Ellsworth proposed the
name "United States" for the new country, which was quickly adopted by
his colleagues.
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