List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 54
This is a list of the 50 cases reported in volume 54 (13 How.) of "United States Reports", decided by the Supreme Court of the United States from February 1852 to May 1852. Nominative reports. In 1874, the U.S. government created the "United States Reports", and retroactively numbered older privately-published case reports as part of the new series. As a result, cases appearing in volumes 1–90 of "U.S. Reports" have dual citation forms; one for the volume number of "U.S. Reports", and one for the volume number of the reports  named for the relevant reporter of decisions (these are called "nominative reports"). Benjamin Chew Howard. Starting with the 42nd volume of "U.S. Reports", the Reporter of Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States was Benjamin Chew Howard. Howard was Reporter of Decisions from 1843 to 1860, covering volumes 42 through 65 of "United States Reports" which correspond to volumes 1 through 24 of his "Howard's Reports". As such, the dual form of citation to, for example, "Mitchell v. Harmony" is 54 U.S. (13 How.) 115 (1852). Justices of the Supreme Court at the time of 54 U.S.  (13 How.). The Supreme Court is established by Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution of the United States, which says: "The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court . . .". The size of the Court is not specified; the Constitution leaves it to Congress to set the number of justices. Under the Judiciary Act of 1789 Congress originally fixed the number of justices at six (one chief justice and five associate justices). Since 1789 Congress has varied the size of the Court from six to seven, nine, ten, and back to nine justices (always including  one chief justice). When the cases in 54 U.S. (13 How.) were decided the Court comprised these nine members: Citation style. Under the Judiciary Act of 1789 the federal court structure at the time comprised District Courts, which had general trial jurisdiction; Circuit Courts, which had mixed trial and appellate (from the US District Courts) jurisdiction; and the United States Supreme Court, which had appellate jurisdiction over the federal District and Circuit courts—and for certain issues over state courts. The Supreme Court also had limited original jurisdiction ("i.e.," in which cases could be filed directly with the Supreme Court  without first having been heard by a lower federal or state court). There were one or more federal District Courts and/or Circuit Courts in each state, territory, or other geographical region. Bluebook citation style is used for case names, citations, and jurisdictions.