Volume 4 assembles a selection of documents illustrating the statuory development of the federal judiciary from 1789-1800. Beginning with a narrative essay on the background of Article III of the Constitution, the volume tracks, from the First through the Sixth Congresses, all the major and minor legislation relevant to the establishment of the American judicial system. As the decade unfolded, experience revealed problems with the system as it was initially structured, and efforts were made to change it. Dissatisfaction with circuit riding, with the method of juror selection, and with judges undertaking duties not strictly judicial, for example, led to various legislative attempts at reform.

Volume 2 details the workings of the Court's experimental practice of sending Justices around the country to serve as judges at sessions of the various federal circuit courts. The documents in this volume reveal that the justices quickly voiced bitter complaints about the demands of their circuit duties. They also questioned the propriety--and perhaps constitutionality--of assigning the same individuals to act as superior and inferior court judges. The documents in this volume also touch upon topics that figured prominently in the law and politics of the era: neutrality, the boundary between state and federal crimes, the constitutional prohibition against impairing the obligations of contracts, and the relationship between law and morality.