Federal District Judges and Race Relations Cases in the South

Abstract

A MONG THOSE NATIONS with federal arrangements of political power, the United States is one of the few maintaining a national judiciary through the states.' Unlike other federal systems where federal judges adjudicate only at the appellate level, United States district judges have a large and continuing area of original jurisdiction. They decide thousands of cases each year and hold court in every state in the union. The widespread location of a federal judicial power has important consequences for the operation of the American political process. In the first place, an important institution embodying national power is added to the political process at the state level. District courts initiate policy, they implement or may overrule policy made elsewhere in the political system. Further, political interests and factions in the several states may make political demands upon the federal courts as well as on federal legislators and administrators and all members of the state political system. Estimating their probable success, interested parties may choose to make claims in the first instance before the federal courts, or they may turn there as a last resort if efforts elsewhere in the political system have been unsuccessful. Despite its importance, we have little information concerning the political activities of the federal district courts. Although increasingly interested in the political functions of courts, political scientists have been more fascinated by the spectacular activities of the Supreme Court which they have studied in some detail. More studies of the basic federal judicial activities would increase our knowledge of the political functions of the courts and of the nature of the American political system. An excellent opportunity to study the district courts may be found in the quantity of race relations cases which have occurred