Читать книгу American Democracy in Context - Joseph A. Pika - Страница 79

Article III is the shortest of the articles delineating the three branches of government. It creates a Supreme Court and says that the judges will hold office “during good Behaviour”—in other words, unless they are impeached, they will have life tenure (the method for selecting Supreme Court justices was spelled out in Article II). Life tenure was designed to promote judicial independence, as was a guarantee that justices receive a compensation for their services that would not be reduced during their tenure. No federal courts existed under the Articles of Confederation, and some members of the Constitutional Convention feared that a large federal judiciary with expanded jurisdiction would interfere with decisions that they felt should be left to the states. Therefore, the delegates postponed the decision about creating federal courts in addition to the Supreme Court by, in Article III, giving Congress the authority to establish lower federal courts if it chose to do so (which it quickly did, in the Judiciary Act of 1789; see Chapter 14).