Congress may by legislative act lay out Federal court districts. These districts were first established in the Federal Judiciary Act of 1789. As the population increases Congress may increase the number of districts.
Constitution of the United States, Amendment VI.
If one is not given a preliminary hearing shortly after his arrest, the right to a writ of habeas corpus (defined in another chapter), gives the accused an opportunity to know the exact nature of the charge against him and why he is held or detained in prison. Then he is faced by his accusers in court and bears the charge against him. In all criminal cases the accused is privileged to be present throughout the entire trial, in fact he is required to be present during the trial.
In early England, and in many other European countries in early times, the accused person was not even permitted to know the reason for his imprisonment, and furthermore was tried in court and found guilty without hearing the evidence or knowing who testified in court.
The right of trial upon indictment of a grand jury, and the privilege of confronting one's accusers in court, having witnesses in one's behalf, and having an attorney to defend one accused, is not yet allowed in certain parts of Russia and perhaps other countries in Europe and Asia. These privileges have been the recognized right of all people in the United States since our glorious Constitution was adopted and became the fundamental law of our country in 1789.
Teachers of civics in our schools ought to ask permission of the judge to take their classes to visit a session of the court. The judge is able to inform the teacher as to when certain cases of most value to pupils and other persons are to be tried. The trial of certain kinds of cases brings out many fundamental facts of rights and duties of citizenship that boys and girls, as well as many adult persons, ought to know.
“The accused is of all men the most miserable, unless the law gives him an equal chance to defend himself. Time was when the courts could hear privately the witnesses against the prisoner, and then call him into court to answer charges, which he never had heard of, made upon the testimony of witnesses he never had seen, without any legal means of compelling his own witnesses to come to court to testify for him and without any lawyer to speak for him against the trained counsel for the government. Many of these abuses had been weeded out before the Constitution was adopted.”—Bacon's American Plan of Government, p. 272.
“Almost all the reform needed to make criminal procedure humane and just, has been incorporated into the constitutions and laws of the states during the first era of independence; but the people of the United States bad no such safeguards.”—Bacon's American Plan of Government, p. 273.
“The charge to be answered by the defendant on trial in a criminal court must be clear, explicit, and definite. The prosecution has no right to compel the accused to show that he is a good member of society.”—7 Peters Rep. 138.
Constitution of the United States, Amendment VI.