Learn about the case -- historical background and documents

The Federal Courts and Their Jurisdiction

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York

The Rosenberg trial took place in 1951 before Judge Irving Kaufman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. After the defendants were convicted in a jury trial and sentenced by Judge Kaufman, the district court denied them posttrial relief four times between December 1952 and June 1953, declining to overturn or reduce their sentences and refusing to grant them a new trial.

The district courts were established by the Congress in the Judiciary Act of 1789, and they serve as the trial courts in each of the judicial districts of the federal judiciary. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York was established in 1814, when Congress divided New York into two judicial districts. New York was subsequently divided into three and then four judicial districts, but the Southern District has always included Manhattan. The court’s jurisdiction over the Rosenberg trial was based on the Espionage Act of 1917, a federal law making it a crime to conspire to transmit to a foreign power information relating to the national defense of the United States.

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

Julius Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg, and Morton Sobell appealed their convictions to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Their appeal was heard by a three-judge panel consisting of Jerome Frank, Thomas Swan, and Harrie Chase. In February 1952, the panel affirmed the convictions in an opinion authored by Judge Frank. In April, the court denied a rehearing of the appeal. The court of appeals also affirmed each of the district court’s denials of posttrial relief and denied the defendants’ motion for an order requiring the district court to modify their sentences.
The U.S. courts of appeals were established by Congress in 1891. A court of appeals in each of the regional judicial circuits was established to hear appeals from the federal trial courts, and the decisions of the courts of appeals are final in many categories of cases. The Second Circuit consists of New York, Vermont, and Connecticut, and the Second Circuit court of appeals has always met in Manhattan.

Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court never reviewed the Rosenbergs’ convictions, but it considered multiple petitions related to the case, and in the final hours before the executions the Court heard arguments about one justice’s decision to grant a stay of execution. In October 1952, the Supreme Court had voted 6 to 3 to deny the Rosenbergs’ certiorari petition appealing their conviction. In November, the court denied their petition for a rehearing. In May, the Court denied a second certiorari petition, this one an appeal of the lower courts’ rejection of the defendants’ assertion of prosecutorial misconduct. In June, on the final day of the term, the Court denied a request for a stay, for hearing arguments on newly discovered evidence of perjury on the part of David Greenglass, and for rehearing the arguments on the rejected certiorari petition, and a majority of the justices also denied a petition for a writ of habeas corpus related to the evidence of perjury.

On June 17, 1953, after the Court had adjourned, Justice William Douglas exercised an authority available to individual justices and granted a stay of execution to allow the lower courts to consider whether the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, rather than the Espionage Act of 1917, should have governed the Rosenbergs’ sentences. In an extraordinary special session two days later, the Supreme Court took the unprecedented step of vacating an individual justice’s stay before the lower courts heard arguments on the question. The Court’s decision, by a vote of 6 to 3, cleared the way for the Rosenbergs’ executions that evening.

The Supreme Court was established by Article III of the Constitution, which granted the Court limited jurisdiction. The Constitution also authorized Congress to grant the Supreme Court jurisdiction over appeals, and Congress provided for various types of appeals from state and federal courts. The so-called Judges’ Bill of 1925 fundamentally redefined the Supreme Court’s role within the federal judiciary by repealing much of the mandatory jurisdiction of the Court. The act preserved an automatic right of appeal to the Supreme Court in a few types of cases, but in other areas cases would come to the Court only when the justices granted a writ of certiorari in response to a petition from a party in a case before a lower court.