In 1789, Congress passed a statute mandating that federal courts, in suits at common law, follow the procedures then used in the states in which they sat. The act was designated as temporary, but in 1792 Congress enacted a successor law specifying that the courts should continue to follow those procedures required by the 1789 act. For suits in equity or admiralty, the courts were directed to follow “the principles, rules and usages which belong to courts of equity and to courts of admiralty respectively,” which was generally understood to refer to the English courts of chancery. The act was flexible, however, as it permitted the courts to make such alterations to their procedures as they deemed expedient. Moreover, the act gave the Supreme Court the authority to establish rules of equity procedure for the federal courts, a power the Court first exercised in 1822.
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