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Circuit riding temporarily ceased in 1801, when the Federalist majority in Congress established new circuit courts that were staffed with Federalist-appointed judges. The next year this reorganization was repealed, and circuit riding resumed under the original circuit court structure.
Originally practiced in England, circuit riding brought the judges directly to the people through courts in a particular area. There were no circuit court judges. Instead, two Supreme Court justices and one district court judge were assigned to hear cases in each circuit.
At the turn of the 19th century, Supreme Court Justices not only heard cases during the Court’s six-to-eight-week term, they traveled to assigned regions of the country to serve as circuit court judges for four to six months in a practice known as circuit riding.
circuit riding, In the U.S., the act, once undertaken by a judge, of traveling within a judicial district (or circuit) to facilitate the hearing of cases. The practice was largely abandoned with the establishment of permanent courthouses and laws requiring parties to appear before a sitting judge.
Circuit riding was a function of the structure of the federal courts for most of the nineteenth century. When Congress established the lower federal courts in the Judiciary Act of 1789, it provided no separate judgeships for the U.S. circuit courts, which were the main federal trial courts.
Under the practice known as "circuit riding," each justice was assigned to one of three geographical circuits and traveled to the designated meeting places within the districts of that circuit. The travel was arduous, and after a plea from the justices, Congress reduced the number of justices designated to hold circuit court from two to one.
Justice Stephen J. Field was riding circuit on the train to San Francisco when he was assaulted by a co-defendant in a suit he had heard while sitting on the Circuit Court for the Northern District of California. A deputy U.S. Marshal accompanying Field shot and killed the assailant.
