act establishing the organization een sketched only in general terms a three-part judiciary made up of e Court and outlined

the structure

of the U.S. federal court system, which had b in the U.S. Constitution. The act established district courts, circuit courts, and the Suprem and jurisdiction of each branch.

The Judiciary Act of 1789, officially titled An Act to Establish the Judicial Cou rts of the United States, was principally authored by Senators Oliver Ellsworth a nd William Paterson and signed into law by Pres. George Washington on Sept. 24, 1789. The act's creators, by essentially all accounts, viewed it as a work in pr ogress. Although indeed amended throughout the years, the basic outline it provi ded has remained largely intact. The act divided the country into districts with one court and one judge in each, along with attorneys responsible for civil and criminal actions in their distri cts. The act also created the office of attorney general of the United States; t he attorney general, a member of the cabinet, is appointed by the president and is head of the Department of Justice. Circuit courts which make up the middle tier of the federal court system were create d to serve as principal trial courts. They also exercise limited appellate juris diction. A local district judge and two Supreme Court justices preside over the circuit courts. The act established that the Supreme Court would be composed of one chief justic e and five associate justices and that all decisions of the Supreme Court would be final. The act also vested in the Supreme Court the power to settle disputes between states and provided for mandatory Supreme Court review of the final judg ments of the highest court of any state in cases where is drawn in question the v alidity of a treaty or statute of the United States and the decision is against its validity or where is drawn in question the validity of a statute of any state on the ground of its being repugnant to the Constitution, treaties or laws of th e United States, and the decision is in favor of its validity. In Cohens v. Virgi nia (1821) the Supreme Court reaffirmed its right under the Judiciary Act to rev iew all state court judgments in cases arising under the federal Constitution or a law of the United States.