History
The United States District Court for the District of Illinois was established by a statute passed by the United States Congress on March 3, 1819, 3 Stat. 502. The act established a single office for a judge to preside over the court. Initially, the court was not within any existing judicial circuit, so the district court exercised the jurisdiction of both a district court and a circuit court, with appeals and writs of error taken directly to the United States Supreme Court. In 1837, Congress placed the District of Illinois within the newly created Seventh Circuit, and the district court resumed its normal jurisdiction, 5 Stat. 176.
The Southern District itself was created by a statute passed on February 13, 1855, 10 Stat. 606, which subdivided the District of Illinois into the Northern and the Southern Districts. The boundaries of the District and the seats of the courts were set forth in the statute:
| “ | The counties of Hancock, McDonough, Peoria, Woodford, Livingston, and Iroquois, and all the counties in the said State north of them, shall compose one district, to be called the northern district of Illinois, and courts shall be held for the said district at the city of Chicago; and the residue of the counties of the said State shall compose another district, to be called the southern district of Illinois, and courts shall be held for the same at the city of Springfield. | ” |
The district has since been re-organized several times. The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Illinois was created on March 3, 1905 by 33 Stat. 992, by splitting counties out of the Northern and Southern Districts. It was later eliminated in a reorganization on October 2, 1978 which replaced it with a Central District, 92 Stat. 883, formed primarily from parts of the Southern District, and returning some counties to the Northern District.
Read more about this topic: United States District Court For The Southern District Of Illinois
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