The Federal and State Court Systems

The Supreme Court annually receives hundreds of petitions from prisoners claiming their trials were unfair and that they should be released. Thus, Clarence Earl Gideon’s petition, four pages painstakingly printed in pencil on lined paper, was hardly unique. Most prisoner petitions lack legal merit and are dismissed by the Court, the justices granted Gideon&s;s petition in order to consider whether the Constitution requires states to provide a defense attorney to poor defendants in criminal cases. Creation Political conflict over the structure of the federal judicial system began at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and has erupted periodically ever since. For most of the nineteenth century, the structure of the federal judicial system remained unchanged. In 1891, Congress added a new set of courts, the circuit courts of appeals, to expand the capacity of the federal courts to hear appeals and to relieve caseload pressures on the Supreme Court.