supplemented in 1865. Section 30, with regard to a defendant's failure to enter a plea, was extended from capital to all crimes by § 14 of the Crimes Act of 1825. Section 31 and 33 were codified in the Revised Statutes. Constitutionality According to Taylor: "Like the Judiciary Act of 1789, the Process Act of 1789, and the Crimes Act of 1790, having been passed by the First Congress, are perhaps the statutes most informative of an original understanding of Congress's constitutional power over the federal judiciary." According to Kurland, "for the most part, Congress enacted statutes that closely tracked the specific constitutional grants of federal criminal authority. However, Congress continued to venture slightly, but significantly, into areas outside the specific constitutional grants." As examples in the later category, Kurland cites the provisions concerning the integrity of the federal criminal process, bribery, misprison of treason, and the revenue provisions. Currie notes that the Crimes Act "resolved a number of interesting constitutional questions". For example, with reference to the punishments of "stripes" and disqualification from office, Currie argues that: "These provisions suggest not only that Congress viewed neither of these punishments as cruel and unusual, but also that they did not understand impeachment to be the sole avenue for the future disqualification of current officeholders." Taylor goes further in arguing the disqualification provision was not merely prospective: "The Crimes Act of 1790 indicates that, beyond its plenary power over federal court jurisdiction and procedure, the First Congress believed it had the constitutional power to make conviction by a court an alternative means of removing a federal judge, outside the impeachment context, and it sheds light on the First Congress's understanding of its own powers to discipline federal judges." Similarly, the Supreme Court and individual justices have cited the Crimes Act's authorization of the death penalty as evidence that the founders believed it was constitutional. Notes References David P. Currie, Constitution in Congress: Substantive Issues in the First Congress, 1789–1791, 61 775 (1994). Edwin D. Dickinson, Is the Crime of Piracy Obsolete?, 38 334 (1924). (1985). Adam H. Kurland, First Principles of American Federalism and the Nature of Federal Criminal Jurisdiction, 45 1 (1996). Paul Taylor, Congress's Power to Regulate the Federal Judiciary: What the First Congress and the First Federal Courts Can Teach Today's Congress and Courts, 37 847 (2010). External links Text from the Library of Congress United States federal